Concluding the rental story
Returned the Honda Civic rental yesterday evening. Unfortunately, I forgot to fill the gas tank before returning it. Realized that when I got there; decided it was only about 3 gallons so I wouldn't worry about it; then was told that it would cost $27.50 in gas charges. I said it was only 3 gallons and they were supposed to charge $5.50/gallon; the woman behind the desk explained that the computer was telling her the amount and she had no authority to change it.
So I set off to refuel the car myself. The very nice rental-return guy gave me a map and pointed out three nearby gas stations. I drove off.
I made a wrong turn on the way to the first one. Tried to recover from it, found myself headed the wrong way. Decided to go to one of the other two. Drove and drove. Eventually discovered I had passed 880 (the freeway the other two were next to) without seeing an exit for it. Got off onto 280 (a different freeway) to turn around, but found I was headed the wrong way on 280. (In my defense, that's a place where "280 north" goes roughly west-by-southwest.) Got off of 280 onto surface streets to turn around, but found that there was no obvious way to get back onto 280.
At that point, just about screaming in frustration, I called Kam, who was patiently waiting for me back at the Fox parking lot. Fortunately for me, she was armed with a map, a calm voice, and a knowledge of what happens to Jed when he hasn't eaten recently enough.
She talked me through the surface streets back to the airport, and I filled up the gas tank along the way.
But by the time I got back to the Fox return desk, I'd been gone for 45 minutes, which meant I was 15 minutes past the time I was supposed to return the car. So the woman charged me for an extra hour. I asked if she could give me the 15 minutes; she said she had no authority to make any changes.
So I spent 45 minutes driving around and being insanely frustrated, and made Kam wait in the parking lot all that time, and ended up paying only about $5 less than I would have if I'd just given up and paid their ridiculous refueling fee. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere for me, but the main thing I was reminded of, once again, was that it's good to have a Kam around.
I spent a lot of time mentally cursing Fox, but I have to admit that a lot of the problem was my fault. (I start to get suspicious anytime I realize that I'm blaming a long series of related misfortunes on everyone but me; I find that that usually indicates that I shared at least a little of the blame.) I could've refueled before returning the car; I could've paid more attention and not gotten lost; I could've arrived earlier to avoid running overtime. The Fox woman behind the desk didn't handle things well, but to be fair there probably really wasn't anything she could do; it's her superiors I should really be mad at, for not allowing an employee the flexibility to work with a customer to resolve a problem.
(Related aside: The woman ahead of me in line at the counter was complaining about something; I gather that her car broke down during the rental period. The employee behind the counter told her she would have to call the manager next day to get some of her money refunded, 'cause she (the employee) had no authority to do anything other than what the computer told her to do.)
So I can't say my experience with Fox was as bad as I'd feared from some reports online, but I can't say it was all that great either. A distinctly amateurish operation in a variety of ways. On the plus side, they do rent hybrids (and doing so is clearly a priority for them, unlike any of the other rental agencies I've talked with). And if you go to their site, you can print out a 10%-off coupon for renting a hybrid or a PT Cruiser, as long as you present the coupon at the beginning of your rental. And both of the return-processing guys I met were friendly and helpful; I think neither of them spoke English entirely fluently, but both spoke well enough to get by, and friendliness goes a long way toward reducing language barriers anyway.
I was going to say other stuff in this entry, but it went and got long. So I'll conclude the story of last night's adventures by saying that we ended up having dinner at an Ethiopian place in San José; the decor wasn't much to look at, but the food was reasonably tasty.
