Don't experiment on rental cars

The BBQ Pit
1

I pit this asshole now in General questions.

He wants to mix some diesel with gasoline/gasohol to run a car with. Fine, it may possibly have some advantages. Though I am somewhat dubious and even if it does there would be a possibility of other disadvantages.

Wanna experiment fine. I love to tinker as much as anyone, even if its for entertainment purposes. Hell, I built a miniture ice rink yesterday because it rarely gets cold enough to do that and I wanted to see what the cats and dogs thought of it.

I’'ll spare you digging through his technical bloviations and tell you whats pittable.

See, he “needs” to experiment to figure out how much diesel is too much.

He “knows” its perfectly safe for the car and its myriad of automotive systems and parts.

Right there, those two concepts are at odds in some ways logically.

But, he doesnt wanna experiment on HIS car. He wants to do it on a rental car and once it starts acting funny. Fill it up with regular gas, hope it gets better, hope the rental company doesnt notice, hope it doesnt do permanent and expensive damage, and hope they don’t catch him and come after his ass for the repair bill.

He even claims that when he rents a car he “owns” it.

I say experiment on your OWN fucking car. IMO his plan is morally suspect to say the least. He also claims if he does any damage its the rental companies duty to pay for it and they can “just write it off”, like that makes money magically appear or something.

He reads like what Smashthestate would be if he was an automotive engineer.

Yeah, this isnt like the Grinch handing out traffic tickets on Christmas or the Grinch throwing his cat out into the snow in the dead of winter, but it still gets my goat.

Jerk.

2

This is extremely important, and there’s a lot of debate on this subject – about what kind of car handles best. Some say a front-engined car; some say a rear-engined car. I say a rented car. Nothing handles better than a rented car. You can go faster, turn corners sharper, and put the transmission into reverse while going forward at a higher rate of speed in a rented car than in any other kind.

P J O’Rourke

How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink

3

This is a person who doesn’t use their windshield wipers in order to save fuel, I don’t think calling them out on ethical grounds is going to help.

Hyper-milers. God help them.

4

Sorry, I submit that experimenting on rental cars is preferable than experimenting on one’s own car, especially if one purchases insurance or manages not to get caught. At least the rental company generally gets its money’s worth of a vehicle (plus they have insurance against this kind of thing, whether or not you pay extra for insurance).

Cite.

5

You’re not serious, are you?

6

Not about the cite, though if I recall the CKY movie correctly, Bam and friends didn’t receive any (ETA: criminal) charges due to the incident with the rental company (the whole flaming car on the street is a different story).

Or are you trying to tell me that rental companies don’t get cars at more reasonable prices, have reduced insurance rates due to volume and additionally make a hefty profit from customers?

7

I’m telling you that you are a comple douchbag if you think it’s ok to lie and cheat the rental car companies, forcing my rates to go up in the process, for your own pleasure and stupid experiments.

8

Well, it can make rates go up for responsible renters. But as indicated, any intelligent company provides for damage - intentional or inadvertent - in its company projections.

9

So you don’t mind paying more for:

food because some customers steal from the supermarket;
clothes at Macy’s because employess rip the company off, or;
the rental car, because some asshole is fucking with it?

Can you just send me a check for a few hundred and I’ll promise not to rip you off this year?

10

It’s not necessarily ripping a company off more than the company expects; I have worked in a supermarket for a long time and we do account for theft, damaged merchandise and irresponsible customers who leave items in need of refrigeration on the shelves. It only makes prices go up if it is shrink in excess of what the company projects. For instance, your produce prices are entirely based on supply; there is a lot of shrink involved on items so perishable.

11

I hope to God I’m being wooshed.

In off chance I’m not, do you think your prices would go down if people didn’t act like assholes, and the cost to the company went down? Of course the cost would come down for you, the consumer. Therefore, the dickwad screwing with the rental, which is prohibited in the legal agreement he signed, is costing you cash. And you don’t seeem to mind.

12

I can’t tell if Krebbs is serious or not. His stance is inane, to say the least, and it’s progressed beyond a simple ironic agreement.

Mr. Krebbs: Yes, companies take precautions to account for risk. What does not follow is the preposition that since they account for risk, it is ok to unilaterally shift your risk onto them. It is not ok to break people’s legs if you know they have insurance. It isn’t ok to ram someone’s car over a parking space because you know you have insurance. That’s what’s called a moral hazard.

Anyway, your point, as silly as it is, is made yet more irrelevant by the fact that the rental company will not rent you a car if you tell them you plan to put the wrong fuel in the car until it starts running badly. If you think it’s ok to violate some entity’s property rights simply because they have an economic advantage, you’re both a dim bulb and a moral reprobate. By that logic, it would be ok for me to steal from people richer than me, because it’s easier for them to get money.

13

No, I don’t really mind. A company is very happy if it loses less than projected. There is no way the price will go down when they’re making a better profit than they might otherwise. If you could sell goods for five dollars, expecting to make 20% profit, would you lower your prices if you made 30%? Um no, it would be extremely stupid of you to do so.

And no, I am not supporting intentional damage of anything, but it happens and is accounted for; therefore I don’t really judge anyone who does so and gets away with it. Are you morally offended when someone intentionally defaults on a loan?

14

I think the point is that you have the cause and effect on those projections backwards. Why do stores project shrinkage? Because people steal shit. That’s not tacit permission for people to steal shit.

If people didn’t steal shit, it wouldn’t be built into the prices, and those prices would never have gotten as high as they are, or they’d shrink again because of competition.

15

Will the company be cruelly disappointed if this quarter’s losses don’t come up to projections?

In order not to appear extremely strange, you need to explain how crime becomes okay so long as it falls within expected levels. “Armed robbery is reported to be down this month. So long as that trend holds, I guess I know what I’ll be doing on Jan 31st.”

16

Most crime is not okay, even if it is within expected levels. But I don’t think damaging a rental car qualifies as crime, no more than placing some meat on a non-refrigerated shelf at the grocery store. Irresponsibility is not criminal: it is simply irresponsible, which is a wholly subjective judgment anyway.

17

You don’t think some shrinkage is unintentional among not only customers but employees? Please :rolleyes:

Do you think you should be charged for product you accidentally drop or, for instance, throwing up on an aisle, which wastes the paid time of employees?

18

What is with the current crop of pit lunacy? It seems like every year around the holidays all the community college dropouts get on teh intarwebs to show those know-it-alls how much they value education.

Irresponsibility is not subjective. We have this entire body of law called “negligence”, which is exactly an objective definition of irresponsibility.

Secondly, when you’re such an idiot that you put meat on a shelf in a store, you are recklessly destroying the store’s property. The store could press charges of vandalism or destruction of private property, or whatever the local ordinance is. They could also sue you for negligence and/or intentional tort. All of those constitute illegal behavior. They also constitute immoral behavior, regardless of the so-called “excuse” that the store plans for people to act wrongly.

Of course, they won’t sue or press charges, because the cost of doing so is more than the loss suffered. But that doesn’t translate into them giving you permission to do so.

You utterly fail to understand this simple concept; I suspect you started this by making a little semi-smartassed response, and then got stuck in and are simply defending your frankly daft assertion because you don’t want to admit you’re wrong. If not, then I am afraid you are nothing more than a puerile buffoon, and I will be along shortly to damage your car/house/etc right up to your coverage limit, because you have given me permission to do so by carrying insurance in the first place.

19

Not if the market is already willing to pay the higher price. What ever the market will bear, and all that.

20

Yes, whatever the market will bear. Which will be less due to the other half of the economic system, which we call by the name of “competition”.

Christ, go take an econ class.