theparkerfamily

The quick brown fox jumped over the good, but lazy Parker family.

so, a funny thing happened

Monday, 27 April 2009

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[Castle Stalker, near Port Appin, Scotland, UK.]
so, a funny thing happened at the car dealership.

i rented a car from whatever the nationwide/generic car rental place was, and the only thing i asked for was for it to be an automatic. i’ve done the wrong side of the road thing before, but had little interest in doing it on hills with a clutch.

turns out that the only automatic that they had on the lot was a Mercedes E-Class Wagon, which the guy described as being worth more than his annual paycheck (it costs $49,250 in the States).

he gave it to us for the rate we already agreed to for what we thought was going to be a crappy Scandinavian four-door, and tossed in a GPS to boot. the lady sparkler said to decline the insurance to use our own, and i drove the really expensive car off the lot like a scared little boy.

when we got back to the apartment (we’re in a two-bedroom for our stay in Edinburgh) i made my wife call our insurance, just to be sure we were okay. it went something like this:

We just rented a Mercedes wagon, and want to make sure it’s covered under our insurance.

What do you mean when you say that you don’t cover “certain” luxury vehicles — like what, Ferrari’s and Lambroghinis?

So, I started walking back to the rental place — and told him either to give us insurance or to walk over and pick the car back up himself.

Long story short, we got insurance — and my parents just got upgraded from riding around in the back of a Ford Mondeo for a week.