Just got back in from my nephew's and brother-in-law's graduations. My Nephew's was in Houston, and my brother-in-law's was in Lexington, VA. I don't know that I would exactly call it a vacation. There were a couple days which were fun, but none that were relaxing by any stretch of the imagination.
The worst part, had to be the trip to Dulles on Sunday June 3rd. Our flight From Houston to Dallas was delayed, and our connecting flight from Dallas to Dulles was delayed by over three hours. This is on top of the original 3 hour layover we already had in the schedule. Needless to say the kids were out of it when we arrived, and weren't even awake to walk to baggage claim at 12:15 AM Monday morning.I got to the Dollar car rental building at Dulles at about 12:45. After waiting an hour and 15 minutes in line, they didn't have the car I had reserved, could only rent me a minivan, and that would be an additional charge, and if I wanted my wife to be able to drive, that would be an still another additional $10.00/day(For $10.00/day, I'll do all of the driving. She can sleep in a car, I can't). This was the point in which the girl went in the back, and I heard a manager in the building. He hadn't bothered to come out and help with any customers since I got there. She told me that she was taking ten dollars off that upgrade, so it would be 20 dollars, and pointed to the line on the contract. Needless to say, I am not as young as I used to be, and 2:00 AM I am no always thinking at the top of my game. Additionally, I was mad. What I didn't notice was that this was a $20.00 Upgrade fee, in addition to the fee's I was already paying. After dealing with the national HQ, they said that the only thing I could do was take it back and pay for the day. As I was doing this, the right mirror popped off, at 55 MPH. I didn't hit anything. Nothing hit me, as far as I can tell. It just popped off. Only the glass fell off, and it was tethered to the car by a piece of black string. These weren't the electrical cables top adjust it. Those were still visible behind the mount.
On the plus side, I did get a better deal over at Budget, spouses are free, they offered a free upgrade from SUV to minivan, if I wanted it (I'll pass). The deal was so much better, that I was able to pay an additional $11.00 for a Garmin StreetPilot c550 and still come out better. The StreetPilot was very nice to have since I was driving in areas that I was totally unfamiliar with, and it even had a subscription to traffic alerts to help bypass traffic in Washington DC.
Additional plusses included a day spent at Johnson Space Center/Space Center Houston and a tour along Skyline drive, with a hike down to a nice waterfall in the Blue Ridge mountains. We probably went about a thousand feet down, to get to the bottom of the falls. The bad part was that I had to go back up to get back to the car.
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2 comments:
Wow, the whole rent-a-car thing sounds horrible. I would have been angry. What a joke!! I will never use them.
It made me livid. I couldn't even be in earshot of the phone when my wife was calling to talk to Dollar's national HQ. And when I went to return the car, and complain, the manager still didn't come out.
Maybe he knew how mad I was.
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