Bad business

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor ‘T ell your husband you might have an oil leak.” That was the message my wife conveyed to me from her boss a few weeks ago. I checked, and sure enough, there were the tell-tale signs of an oil leak coming from her Ford Explorer. It’s about 10 years old now, so I guess these things happen.

So, I took it up to the Goodyear place there in West Memphis and after a few days and a not-so-few hundred dollars, the leak was fixed. So, we drove it up to Fayetteville to visit the kids and had no problems. The next week, it came snow and ice and so we didn’t really go anywhere.

But then the snow melted and that signature rainbow-ish oil slick stain you see on the driveway when oil and water mix was in our driveway. I didn’t think too much of is since we had indeed had an oil leak. But the next week, I saw what appeared to be another oil stain – a fresh one – on the driveway. I confirmed this by placing an old Amazon delivery box under the SUV overnight, and sure enough, it was leaking oil again (or still … anyway).

I explained all of this to the Goodyear people and they said they could take a look at it. So, I took it back up there. In the meantime, my wife and daughter had a trip planned for Spring Break, along with my two daughters-in-law, my mother-inlaw, and my sister-in-law – so six ladies in total, which would be fine in my wife’s seven-seater Explorer.

Unfortunately, the oil leak proved to be a bit more of an endeavor that anticipated and would not be ready for the trip. So, we decided to rent one for the long weekend and I made arrangements online with the local car rental place. I don’t want to name names, but it rhymes with Shmenterprise …

I went through the process, uploading drivers licenses, insurance cards, proof of residence, etc., selected the type of vehicle I wanted from their inventory (mid-size/large SUV with a minimum occupancy of six adults), and put in my credit card information. I then clicked “confirm” to confirm.

A few seconds later, I got a confirmation email confirming my reservation and confirming my pickup time of 2 p.m. Friday. So far, so good, right?

Well, Friday rolls around, I get a text confirming my pickup time and we’re good to go. We have to do this weird inconvenient rigamarole where my wife leaves work to meet us at the rental car place driving my truck, while my daughter and I drive up there in my daughter’s car. You see, we are going to have three vehicles (my truck, my daughter’s car, and the rental) in one place, so we’re going to need three drivers.

Anyway, we get there about 20 minutes early, just in case there are any complications (the last time I rented a car, I ended up having to get my Dad to drive me back to the house to get a utility bill to prove I really did live where my drivers license, pay stub and wife said I did). The “complications” started almost immediately.

First off, it seems like everyone is West Memphis was also renting a car that day. And there was only one guy working the whole place. Oh, and the people ahead of us were having trouble proving they were who they claimed they were and/ or getting payment processed. I don’t know if we just caught them on a bad day or what, but people were getting frustrated about the whole process – including the guy behind the counter who eventually disappeared only to be replaced by another guy several minutes later.

So, that guy was the guy who eventually called our names from the sign-in sheet. Oh, as a side note, when that happened, there were several people who were quite surprised to find that there even was a sign-in sheet. I would probably have said, “Oh, you were here first. Go ahead,” but we had an actual appointment time, which was now 15 minutes past, while these were walk-in people.

Sigh … so, the guy pulls up our reservation, does a few clicky-clicks on the computer and then kind of scowls.

“You guys reserved a mid-size/large SUV?” he asked. I could already get a sense of where this was going. I said that we did.

That’s when he informed us that they didn’t have one. Well, actually, they did have one, but the people who reserved it reserved it earlier than we did, so they would have priority. Hmm …

I was about to go into the bit from the old “Seinfeld” episode where they don’t have Jerry’s car and he does this whole deal about “That’s not how reservations work … you reserve the car! That’s why they call it a reservation!”

But my wife just shook her head and gave him her best disappointed look. I know that look. I bet it stuck with him for hours … Actually, he probably forgot about us the second we walked out the door. Bottom line, I can not in good conscience recommend Shmenterprise.