On Friday afternoon my Xtrail and I were reunited.
I actually got used to and enjoyed the sweet Mazda 5 rental which, by the way, came very close to getting crumpled, too. At Cherryhill mall, where the most senior seniors rule the tempo, a very old man in a giant van nearly backed into me. I found that Mazda’s horn in record time and I must say, I hit it a few extra times for effect! The Mazda 5 is like an SUV that’s been put in the dryer too long. It’s a nice little ride.
After turning it in, one of the rental company dudes drove me to the body shop. While he was finalizing the paperwork everybody else in the office gathered around and chatted with me. When we left, I remarked that everybody seemed pretty eager for 5 o’clock to arrive. “We’ve had a pretty hard week”, he said. “Oh?” I said. “Did someone smash up one of the cars or something?”
No, it was much worse than that. A woman whose insurance company had approved her rental, returned it mid-week because her own car was ready. When they put the final paperwork through, the insurance company said, “oopsie!” and refused to pay the $2000. charges. The woman was unprepared for such a steep bill and everyone agreed she should not have to pay it, having had prior approval. So who paid the bill? ALL of the employees of the rental company. Each of them had their pay docked for that week. Can you believe it?
I said, “There HAS to be another system! That’s crazy!” He gave a sad little laugh and said, no, that was the only way to handle it, that it didn’t happen very often but it really hurt when it did.
Working at a car rental company can’t be very lucrative to begin with. And now each of the half-dozen or so on staff would lose hundreds from their pay for that week because of an insurance company SNAFU. As we all know, insurance companies do very well. It seems to me that the insurer should have been on the hook for its own mistake but of course it’s the little working guy who pays the price. And you thought you had a bad week?
As for the Xtrail, it even smells new. They cleaned it inside and out and the only indication that it had a wreck (other than the public record, which is the law) is by looking at the license plate where you can see the marks from when it was all bent out of shape. I’ll go back in a month when the paint has cured and have a new stone guard put on and then we’re done. And I have already promised I won’t smash it up again. After all, I’ll be driving it until it won’t drive anymore!