Here's why car rental companies hate car guys

maybe god hates mustangs i don't know but it's not my fault i rode motorcycles with a bunch of guys and they were going to do a cross-country trip where we were all going to put all of our bikes in containers ship them out to california through various ways fly out whatever and then ride them all back well due to some work commitments for other things i couldn't fly out i couldn't make the road trip out so i ended up having to sort of drive out and catch up i contacted budget rental car and i picked a car up at hartsfield which was a little toyota corolla just tan tan interior the tires were probably tan it was just tan all over it was the most invisible nondescript little car and i'm not a huge guy i'm 6'1 but it was a little cramped a little tight but you know this was going to be my chariot you know the license plate on my truck says all nighter i've prided myself at staying up for days on end when i paint a mural sometimes i'll stay awake for three four straight days just painting day and night i can just do that and that's just one of my super powers so i head out and you know drive across country and and it's fantastic you know it's just i'm seeing parts of the country i've never seen before across the mississippi for the first time i'm you know seeing the landscape change and you know it's great to to drive at night and to watch the sun come up as you're driving i've driven across this country in about 43 hours which is not a great time but i was not trying to set any records i was in a toyota corolla just trying to get a ticket and trying to catch up with my motorcycle so i get to san francisco early morning meet up with the guys that got my bike and one of them follows me to the rental car place to return the car and you know this is 20 years ago but the time they didn't know the key drops all that kind of stuff we're going to talk the guy you know here's your car and he kind of looks at the paperwork for a minute and he types on the computer and looks on the paperwork and you know types on the computer some more says hold on for a second goes in the back he gets the guy another guy comes out he looks at the paperwork types in the computer calls someone on the phone kind of looks at me looks the car puts the phone down said where'd you get this car from it's a hartsfield airport in atlanta he goes outside he starts checking the vin number and he's checking the door and you know and he said when did you rent this car and i saw the night before last and so he types in the computer some more and he's a little perturbed and i'm like you know is there a problem he said well you know that's an eight day riddle and i said well i know but i just drove it straight through and the problem turned out that you know back then if you picked a car up like after four they didn't charge you for that day and if you got it back before 11 they didn't charge you for that day so i really only had the one day rental from atlanta to san francisco and the computer was not having it the computer was like that's an eight day trip that computed now the guy starts thinking that like maybe i'm like trying to launder a stolen car or something so he's like comparing the vin and he's reading the car and he's just does not want to take this car back for some reason i don't know what he thought i was trying to do there was just something that didn't compute with this guy and he was not having it but you know they dug around and there was nothing wrong with renting a car and returning it and you know 43 hours later but the fact that it was well over its first oil change and had you know this copious amounts of miles on it for 43 hours he was not him happy but but it you know it is what it is so he took the car back and we continue on the trip the trip was exciting but a few days into the trip my motorcycle just had a catastrophic failure and it was not going to make the trip and i had limped it from where we were in california through death valley on the fourth of july actually which don't ever do that it's like driving in a hair dryer i made it to vegas i tried to get the bike fixed there but it was just not gonna happen so the guys on the trip i'm like you know going without me i'll sort it out my wife the time was with me so i decided okay look we're we're in the southwest we're here to see something the bike trip didn't work out but let's don't go out like that so i called budget rental car up again and i said hey what do you got this coal and they said well we got a convertible mustang it literally just came in today it's got like four miles on it i'm like that sounds fantastic we take off and we only had about three days i had to get back to georgia with the bike to get back to work so i had okay i got three days to kill in the southwest and this rental car and you know and again kind of being my first road trip ever i don't want to miss anything so you know since i've kind of learned to more go a little slowly and process things with the time i just wanted to shopping spree style just frantically run through every national park and monument i could possibly see you know so we just take off and this is grand canyon and four corners and castle rock and moab and the arches and just blowing through the southwest and i always really wanted to go to colorado too so hey we could cut up through moab and go to colorado that sounds great and so getting to moab and i'd been an off-roader and always been excited to see this place but of course i'm now in the the least appropriate vehicle but i wanted to see something so we're in this mustang convertible and i see the this little dirt road off to the side looks like it kind of went out towards some pretty rocks and stuff so hey let's go try that it's a dirt road this car can do it so i drive on the dirt road and you know it starts getting a little steeper but the car's doing fine and you know driving and a little steeper a little rockier and you know my wife time's getting a little nervous oh my god we're fine we're fine i'm just excited i just want to see what's around the next curve so i kept going and and now we started going downhill again and you know it stopped getting steeper and steeper a little bit gravel on hard rocks and a little steeper and steeper and you know i'm not sliding or anything but it just starts to turn into more of a jeep trail and i'm like okay it's probably time to turn around and you know if you've been to moab or somewhere in the southwest like that it's like the old road runner cartoons you know it's just like a cliff with a little shelf on it another cliff and kind of nothing dangerous but kind of an arrow you know no guardrail or anything like that i go to you know stop the car and i'm just going to back out the way i came that seemed like a good idea so i put in reverse and of course the tires kind of spin and the rear kind of walks over towards the cliff a little bit so i stop and okay move forward about 10 feet try it again a little more over and each time i try to back up the car just wants to kind of spin in the gravel and as it spins it just wants to walk over towards the edge of course that's the side my wife's on and she's not happy so let's just keep going this trail just gets steeper and steeper i don't really have an option to go back out and it's like a monday or something so it's not like you know it's a weekend with a bunch of guys and jeeps and trucks can maybe pull me out or something so we basically just kept going eventually the road just starts getting steeper and steeper and i go to stop and kind of plan on it and the car just starts kind of shimmy a little bit i'm thinking oh this isn't good there's this huge drop over here and a huge wall over here so we just kind of slide down and there's this little ledge in the rock and the car just kind of it wasn't huge or anything but the car just kind of skates off the ledge it just makes this god-awful scraping noise just get up underneath the car and gets on the bottom of it and the road thankfully kind of leveled out and crossed a little creek and turned out to get onto a regular road and we were able to go back out that way but i get the stop sign i could hear a scraping kind of sound under the car not good so i get out and immediately i noticed that the big ground effects piece between the front wheel and the back wheel on my side is just gone and the one on her side was mostly gone that's what was dragging and the tailpipe in the rear which is just a little v6 but the tailpipe was a little squished and the valance was not quite attached in the back anymore i'm not one to tear up anybody's things i don't trash rental cars on purpose but i did immediately pat myself on the back for checking that little 12 damage waiver i'm like well they're not gonna like this but you know it wasn't intentional and i'm really sorry and i'm sure i'll make it work she was a very real follower type person now she's not happy you're going to be in trouble and i was like no i checked the box it's okay and you're getting in trouble but now we got to get the car back to vegas and get a van or truck or something so i've called ahead and i'd reserved a truck to put my motorcycle in so we can drive the truck with the bike falling soldier style back to georgia so i'm having a great time she's actually sleeping i'm just you know sailing and again you know this is not a great driver's car but i'm having a fantastic time the top's down sun's out just blasting and on the horizon though i see what looks like a mountain range and i was like cool you know they've already seen the rockies it's really exciting and uh but the mountains just didn't look right and it was just this this wall with kind of looked like snow but dirty snow on the top and as i'm getting closer i realize that it's a lot closer than i think it looked like it was you know 100 miles out on the horizon but it was actually very close and it was not a mountain range it was a sandstorm and it's like those ones you've seen these pictures the guys that you know served over in the middle east with these walls of sand coming out you're like oh my god so i pull over put the top up kind of wake her up like hey check that out and so it doesn't look good so you know we're thinking i mean there's literally nothing for 100 miles in any direction like where do we go she tells me let's try to beat it so i'm like wow i got like actually get a permission from my wife to go fast so i'm hanging this thing out but it's coming closer and coming closer and eventually it's just honest and again it's you know big wins nothing like a tornado or anything but you can just hear the sand just pelting this car just i mean just this awful sounded like a snake hissing and a sandblaster it was this pretty kind of a candy orange color you know like a silver base with a candy orange over it's a beautiful color car and oh my god it was just getting pelted and so you know driving through it and there's lightning from all the static and just the tops kind of whipping around and again the winds aren't that bad but anyway so we finally get to this little gas station and you know pull in under their gas cover but there's nothing to again the sand just coming sideways this car just gets hammered and you know finally the winds die down and you know get out to go inside and the power's been knocked out and i i noticed that the the building actually had like an exit on all four sides and talking to the lady inside they actually do that on purpose because these sandstorms are sort of common and they want you to be able to get into the store not on the side that the wind was blowing so i thought that's kind of interesting but anyway so get inside and you know get a drink get a few snacks and go back out of the car and it looked like your favorite hot wheels car from childhood where you had played with it so much that all of the paint was just missing from the leading edges of the fenders and the wheel arches and the hood and the whole thing was now just this could be pretty cool now but it was just this like satin kind of matte metallic orange now it was no longer the shiny candy color it used to be the plastic headlight covers were sort of cataract like an old dog or something like they were just completely hazed over the body work was metal but the sort of nose piece of the mustang was this mcdonald's yellow color and the paint was mostly missing from that it was just this yellow flaking through this car like had been on the bottom of the ocean and it's literally three days old so we get back on the road and you know she's not even talking to me at this point she's convinced we're going to go to jail and again like there's nothing illegal about getting in a sandstorm this wasn't my fault this is an act of god if anything maybe god hates mustangs i don't know but it's not my fault you know we've lost some time to the sandstorm and i'm really trying to get back in time so we just hurtled through the night and you know somewhere south of provo around like in beaver utah the wind picks up again no sandstorm but now it's tumbleweeds they're actually like in the movies i never thought that but they really just these big barrel things come blowing through and we're kind of a hurry and i'm on the highway and i'm like dodging them and it's kind of like a video game it's like frogger or something you see them coming out and of course it's at night so they're just kind of coming into the headlights the last second i'm trying to swerve around a few but i don't want to crash the car over a tumbleweed so i have to hit a few of them and then eventually i just caught one big one it still had like a big root ball on the bottom of it and i hit it and i just heard the pop of breaking glass the headlights were plastic this was like the fog light in the front of the car we get back to vegas and go back to the state at the stardust casino which is still around there spending that stardust go to take the mustang back and and again this is like something out of some 80s movie i mean this it's like ferris bueller's day off when cameron they launched the ferrari at the back this car is totaled so i go inside and you know it's a young guy at the counter and i just said hey man um i'm here to return to mustang um i've got some bad news um it experienced the sandstorm and a few other mishaps um i'm very sorry and i just want to work with you whatever i need to do to make it right and this guy i don't know if he just either wasn't a car guy or just was the most laid back chill rental car employee or maybe because it's vegas stuff happens these cars all the time i don't know he just kind of looked out and he said wow okay well you signed the damage waiver so it's okay i'm like okay okay like like i do you need like they mean to sign something like you picked like police report he's like no no we're getting a chance for this sort of thing you're good man i was like cool and just as i'm walking out his boss comes storming in what happened to the mustang i'm like oh crap so i turned around and tried to save this guy just been so nice to me i said sir i'm very sorry i rented the car three days ago um we got a sandstorm um experienced another mishap with the tumbleweed and the ground effects and this was not on purpose um but i fill out a statement and so now he's mad he's talking about calling the police and you know this again back on the phone again so he's on the phone with budget again and i'm thinking like man it wasn't five days ago somebody else was on the phone budget so you know he's on the phone he's looking out he's going out checking the numbers on the car i'm thinking like oh my god they are never gonna rent me a car again so he's not he's not happy but nothing really could do and i again this is why you should always get the waiver whether it's 12 18 now get it because you never know so i go over to the rental desk i bet the return desks go the rental desk and i go to pick up the truck that i had reserved which was supposed to be an f-150 something big enough it's kind of pretty big bike i had at the time but i go to get it and it's this little like ford ranger flare side with the hard tonneau cover on the back which there's no way this bike is even fitting in the truck along with the tonneau cover i feel like i'm already on thin ice with budget and asking to upgrade my vehicle or what happened doesn't seem like a great idea but i got no choice so i go stand in line now the lady in front of me at the royal desk now is some fancy lady from new england somewhere and she is new york or something she is chewing the lady at the desk out because somebody had brought her rental car around and had not turned the air conditioner on first and it was hot and she felt very insulted that she had to get a hot car she's chewing this lady out it's like steve martin and playing trains and automobiles chewing out the rental desk lady and you know it's not that lady's fault obviously but she's taking it like a trooper so the lady stomps off and and there's no saying in the south that you catch more flies with honey so i'm unhappy about being given the wrong vehicle but it wasn't this lady's fault so i just kind of you know straighten up and i just said ma'am i've come across a little problem with my rental car and i think you might be the person that could fix it can you help me please and she said well sweetheart i'd be happy to so i explained to her the problem you know big motorcycle small truck asked if i could take the fiberglass cover off she said no no those are drilled in you can't take those off and she said well we have lincoln town cars do you think it would fit in the trunk okay look out back this motorcycle was a little over nine feet long three feet wide it was not gonna fit in the trunk but i thanked her for the suggestion i said well thank you man but i believe it's a little bigger than that i'm gonna need a van or something and she said well what did they give you that little truck i said yes ma'am i thought it was gonna be a full-size truck but it turned out to be really low she said well that's just never gonna work for you well tell you what i'll give you a full-size van for the same price as the little truck i said that'd be great thank you so much put the bike in the van bought some ratchet straps hooked it in the back took off cross country now we're camping in the van on either side of a motorcycle with like the exhaust here and the straps in arkansas stopped for tonight i went inside to get something to eat somebody tried to break into the van i guess to steal the motorcycle so they smashed the window out of the van now the van's full of broken glass and i'm thinking like budget rental car is gonna kill me so we make it back to athens with no mishap they go explain the window in the van they had actually kind of tried to crowbar the door broke the glass out of the door door's gonna have to be replaced again not my fault i think to this day there is probably a picture of me somewhere at budget rental car with a red line through it that says do not rent cars to this guy let's be honest [Music] you

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 1,966,289

Rating: 4.8878465 out of 5

Keywords: Christopher Michaels, Rental Car, Budget, AVIS, Hertz, ford mustang, southwest, vinwiki, car stories, damage waiver, insurance, sandstorm, moab, off roading, vandalism, cannonball, vehicle history, damage, accident, contract, rental agreement, truck, van

Id: b8hYh8YE2KM

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 17 2020

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