Amy’s Garage

I had to fly from Vermont to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania last month. There were no direct flights so I had to go east to NYC to be able to go west to the Pitt. The planes were small and a bit noisy, but I just love the miracle of traveling up in the air, that I don’t really care how small or large a plane is. I am just in awe of sitting inside a room up in the sky.

It was wicked windy out and the small propeller plane shook all over the place. It settled down for a moment coming into NYC so I snapped this  picture of some of the sky scrapers that cover that island city.

I mean Seriously NYC, if global warming is for real and the water level of the oceans rise… you are so screwed.

Anyways, I never got around to making a reservation for my rental car, and decided to see how bad it would be to walk up to a counter and request a car.

All I can say is OUCH!

After being quoted $75.00 a day x 6 days + taxes and other fees, I about fell over.

I decided to put on my blogger hat and ask enough questions to get a good story and enough information to make my procrastination less painful. The young fellow (another unsung hero in my book!) who waited on my was so polite and very helpful.

I already knew that Airport Rental Counters are the most expensive place to rent a car, but have had great luck calling the airport counter directly to make a deal that I assumed that I could wheel and deal at the counter. I totally assumed wrong!

I explained that I had an automotive blog and wrote for www.askpatty.com “The Premier Automotive Site For Women”. How he should give me a great deal so I would write him a fabulous review. I tried to get him to go online to check out my blog and Ask Patty, but it was against company polity.

We concurred I could have set up my laptop and gotten a better deal online, waited 10 min., come back to the counter with a reservation and a savings of about $20.00 per day. My young man decided to save me this trouble and just gave me the discounted price.

He claimed he could not do better because Enterprise pays their employees per hour and they have a set amount they can discount of which he gave me the best deal he could.

I could have gone over to National or Alamo to see if I could get a better deal because their employees are paid a base salary and then a commission on sales. But they tend to be a harder sale on the insurance and extras, plus I felt like I got a good deal and appreciated how much time my young man gave me. He got an A+ in Customer Service!

I ended up renting a Ford Focus. I only had to drive an hour and was not going to be using the car much, so the attractive price of renting a little Focus sold me.

The truck size was really large and the front and back seats were very comfortable.

I loved it that I could plug in my iPod and listen to an Amy Radio show without any commercials.

Plus, I had great fun playing with the control toggles on the steering wheel!

I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable the little Focus was.

• If you are in the market for a New Car, $15,000 would buy you a brand new Ford Focus.
• Fuel Mileage is 24 mpg city / 35 mpg highway
• To fill a tank full of gas it cost approx. $23.00 for 13.5 gallons of gas, which would take you approx. 340 miles down the road.

I’m still a Honda Girl, but I would rent a Ford Focus from Enterprise Rental Cars again. How about you? ??????? ????

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.