My dad is much more mobile than I was expecting although in a lot of pain. The good news is that the pain is at incision site and not at the pinched-nerve site as before.
Excellent to hear. Which suggest the incision discomfort will heal and the nerve-pinch is resolving / resolved.
Cousin had her car stolen, twice (stolen once, she got it back and it was stolen again). It was an older Honda CRV. Works well for Denver winters, and carting her dog around. Perfect really.
She wanted something similar in a rental car.
Insurance/rental company hooked her up with a Dodge Charger. 
Ummm…
I tend to get extravagant on vacation with rental cars. Hey, you’re on vacation. The funniest one I rented was a Lincoln Town car. But worked out well as we had to cart people around to restaurants and such.
That is good news. Perhaps the surgery worked, and it’s just a while to heal.
I go the opposite way and have dealt with a small “rent-a-wreck” business in St Martin. Nice people, and the one time when our battery died a guy showed up in minutes driving our replacement car. He’d brought a new battery and tools with him. I offered to wait to make sure he didn’t need a ride, but he wouldn’t hear of that.
Cool Kayaker. And as had been said, sometimes you get what you get. We reserved a small SUV in Pittsburgh. Might have to cart people around.
Expected a CRV or similar. Ended up with a BMW SUV. Only thing they had. Oookkaaay. After we figured out all the bells and whistles, well, was pretty nice car.
In the Caribbean or similar, rent-a-wreck is the way to go. In a major US city, not so much. I’ll be in Curacao on Wed; looking forward to some raucous local color.
At the place where i work we do two things…
- Get a flight number and monitor
- Give two hours for international flights rhen start contacting. If cannot contact would not cancel till next day.
We ALWAYS confirm return time on pickup.
If late, customer gets charged $20 per hour… and in extreme cases car gets reported stolen. Leaving a message on their phone “get here quick or the police will look for you” gets fast action.
In the management system we use there is no slop.
If we accept a booking it means theres a car for the booking. It cannot be booked otherwise.
Even by agents who have API access to our system in real time.
Much more common for us is the customer who shows up with five 240 pound adults and 6 suitcases expecting to fit into a corolla and then inform us the we (the rental car agency) is responsible for providing a car big enough to fit wverything in at the same price.
My favorite car rental upgrade experience.
I was visiting my sister, who was working at a ski resort in Squaw Valley. When I went to pick up my car at the Reno airport there were some delays and I was getting cranky.
Then it was my turn. Instead of just giving my my cheap subcompact rental, the agent starts asking me stuff about where I’m going. I’m unfamiliar with issues with automobile performance and very high altitudes, but I guess there are issues. The agent was concerned the cheap subcompact I reserved wasn’t going to get enough oxygen to run, or something.
Then the agent said “I can tell you’ve had a long wait and a rough day. Here’s what I’d like to do. We just got in some brand new Cadillac Sevilles and I can upgrade you at no charge.
I’ve never been a car person, but that was one sweet ride. And the car had less than 20 miles on it when I drove it out of the rental lot.
I’m on a business trip right now and Avis gave me a Dodge Charger. I only asked for an intermediate level car.
Just an aside but my wife an I are taking a week away together in July to Lanzarote (first holiday away as a couple in 18 years…yay!) and the price with Avis for a small car for a week is £140 all in. Pretty much exactly the same as it was pre-covid and we found the same situation in Mykonos last October.
OTOH, looking at hiring a car in Salzburg this August…best part of £1000 for two weeks! about double what it was pre-covid.
Go figure, Rental costs seem to be all over the place with the chance of being royally stung in some locations.
You’d think it’d be a pretty common occurrence, with airlines / cancellations / delays being what they are these days.
Last year, I had booked a car for pickup in Portland, Oregon, to Los Angeles. The website would NOT let me pick a dropoff anywhere other than LAX. As we were departing by train, that was… not ideal. As in, one of us would have had to go to the train with the luggage, while the other dashed out to the airport and caught a cab back to the train station, white knuckling it the whole way. Or we’d have had to drop it off the night before, cab back to the hotel, then drag a TON of luggage via cab to the station.
Luckily, when I called the company (Budget), they let me change the dropoff… to Union Station.
Oh - and part of the reservation email was in RUSSIAN. Seriously.
Don’t ever confuse what the company is willing to do with what the website has been programmed to do.
The website is intended to handle 98% of the customer interactions for a penny apiece. It might cost them $10 to have you call and talk to a human about that special situation that the website loudly insists is flat impossible. They are OK with pissing off most of (generic) you to save $9.99. Are you?
If not, call them, and they’ll probably be happy enough to oblige.