Last summer I was fortunate enough to be sent on a six-week trip to Europe, courtesy of the project I was working on. Well, I would have considered myself fortunate were it not for the facts that (1) this was Rotterdam – not known for being one of the beauty-capitals of the world, and (2) I spent almost every waking hour in a warehouse stacked to the rafters with automotive oil and other specialty lubricants (and not the fun kind, either…). <\/p>\n
I’d been over to Rotterdam a couple of times before, and had spent several years living in Brussels (one country and about an hour’s drive South of Rotterdam), so I figured that while I had an expensed rental car I’d take advantage of the opportunity to catch up with some old friends during the odd free weekend I had. Unfortunately, since I’d last been over to Europe on the company, they had changed the rental car policy. Because one dozy twonk visiting Houston from Asia managed to prang his rental car – and then blamed it on ‘not knowing the road system’ – the company had decreed that people on business trips to ‘foreign countries’ were no longer allowed to rent cars. Really. No-one. Because of one non-fatal accident. Knee-jerk? Noo, not us! Instead, travelers were ‘advised’ to use taxis instead – like local taxis in most countries are the safest way to travel, huh?<\/p>\n
I figured that this would be entirely unworkable for a six-week trip, so I started working my way up the management chain, trying to get an exception to this policy. I argued that I “was European” (although I’d officially become a U.S. Citizen by then), so Europe could hardly be considered ‘foreign’ to me, and that I had a European driving license (albeit obtained in England where they drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road) and had been driving there for years, so what could possibly go wrong? About four managers up, I finally succeeded in getting approval (coincidentally, from a British expatriate – maybe he sympathized with me, or didn’t want to fall foul of the same guideline himself) and was all set. So when I arrived I picked up a nice little Volvo fro Hertz, and set about driving round Europe (or at least between the hotel and the warehouse) with impunity. <\/p>\n
And, believe it or not, without incident. Almost. I did manage to pick up a speeding ticket in the Maas Tunnel, but one speeding ticket in 6 weeks of speeding is nothing to quibble about. The only real<\/em> problem I had was that someone put a relatively minor ding in my bumper, whilst the car was parked in the hotel parking garage. Actually, the garage was shared with several nightclubs, so the perpetrator was probably some E’d up, Red Bull swigging, hair-gelled, techno-fan, so I shouldn’t be surprised that they didn’t leave their name and contact number tucked under my windscreen wiper.<\/p>\n I didn’t give it too much thought, because the ding was relatively minor, and I was insured. Right? I always decline all of the rental company’s insurance, because it’s just a scam. Besides, one of the joys of Amex Platinum Card ownership is that they provide free car rental insurance for you. So when I returned the car at the end of the six weeks, I just told them to contact Amex and left them to it.<\/p>\n A couple of months later, I was contacted by Hertz to say that the damage to the car was going to cost $1,000 – for a ding the size of an egg?? I wish I’d just filled it with chewing gum and sprayed it silver before I’d returned the car! I called Amex to find out why, and they pointed out that their free insurance had a rental period limit of 35 days, and as I had had the car for 42 days, I wasn’t covered. I tried reasoning that the damage had happened within the first 35 days, but they weren’t having any of it. The swines.<\/p>\n Normally, I could have possibly gotten away with including this on my expense claim (which was $20,000+ for this trip, so they probably wouldn’t have batted an eye), but my claim had been submitted and settled two months previously, and submitting a new claim just for this would probably draw some unnecessary scrutiny. Add to this my rejection of the corporate policy against renting cars in a foreign country, and my tenuous position as a contractor, and I decided it would be prudent to just eat the cost myself, and chalk this one up to experience. I figured that next time I would just return the car after 34 days and pick up another one.<\/p>\n But then, just to rub salt into the wounds, last week Amex sent me a ‘special offer’ invitation. For the not unreasonable sum of $24.95 per rental, Amex would provide me with their new, improved ‘Premium Car Rental Protection’. Among the various benefits that this would give me was insurance against accidents for “rentals up to 42 consecutive days”. 42 days! The exact number of days I had the Hertz car for before, when they told me I wasn’t covered! Now, either this is an incredible coincidence, or Amex are indulging in ‘targeted marketing’ and are offering me this based on my previous rental history. Or they could just be winding me up and rubbing my nose in it… They may as well have just sent me a letter saying “Hey, Dirk, ever feel like you’ve been fucked over?? Mwahahaahahah!”<\/p>\n Whatever. Maybe next time I’d better just stick to company policy and get taxis. As long as they’re prepared to see me rolling up to the warehouse in a chauffeur-driven stretch Hummer… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last summer I was fortunate enough to be sent on a six-week trip to Europe, courtesy of the project I was working on. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,13],"tags":[48,29],"class_list":["post-340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-work","tag-car","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}