> Returned next day. Tried to be nice. "Maybe assembly line put it in
> wrong so there was some pre-stress on the glass, contributing to the
> fracture that should not have happened??" Dumb c*** says "Nonsense, that
> is a BRAND NEW CAR, It CAN NOT HAVE *ANYTHING* WRONG WITH IT." Excuse
> me, it's a Chrysler POS, it's pretty much guaranteed to have some, if
> not multiple things "wrong" with it when brand new. Stupid, ignorant,
> b***h.
I've never had a truly BAD customer service experience with a car-rental
firm, but then maybe my expectations aren't very high to begin with.
As far as the mechanical side of the new-rental-car experience...
I flew into SeaTac once, maybe fifteen years ago. Late at night, last
thing they had left was a Plymouth minivan. Brand new, 30 miles on the
odo. Okay, fine, motor off to Bellevue.
Next night I drive into Seattle for dinner with some friends, and on the
way back across the floating bridge I notice that the temperature gauge
is periodically bouncing off the hot peg and coming back down to normal.
It's binary - ping, pong.
Common now for temp gauges to be little more than three- or four-stage
idiot lights, with some combination of cold, normal, and fried and
little or nothing in between, but I hadn't experienced too many of those
back then.
At any rate, it took a whole ten seconds to decide:
a) It's still running
b) I've got ten miles to go to the hotel
c) What happens to it after that I could give an airborne fornicative
act about.
d) It's pouring rain
e) The last thing I want to be doing is troubleshooting this POS by the
side of the road
Ran fine back to the hotel. Next morning I opened the radiator cap.
The radiator was clean as the day it was manufactured. As in apparently
never touched by coolant.
Called up...think it was Thrifty.
"Oh, you can take it to our office over there, they'll get you something
else."
So, after a few more words about "Let me write down your name please,
and just a reminder that it's not my fault if it blows up on the way,
you've been warned", I did. And it got there.
Gave me a little Dodge convertible IIRC. Guy at the counter was
nonplussed about the van.
"Couple months ago we had a family come in, picked up one of those, it
was fine until they hit the mountains. That one blew up, we had to tow
it back. The radiator fan had never been plugged in."
John.
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