Went for a walk this morning to visit three car rental places and see if we could finalise a deal. We'll need a car over the period 4-12 Oct.
The first was to Budget at the Comfort Inn, near Home Depot. The young fellow there gave me a price of $210 plus a max of $65 for a GPS and a total of $221 for Loss or Damage Waiver (LDW) insurance. A total of $496 or $62 per day.
The next agency was Avis and that was housed in the Holiday Inn closer to Springfield Plaza. When I got there, the attendant was absent so I sat down to wait. She returned about five minutes later and despite having seen me, the first thing she did was to make a phone call ! It crossed my mind to walk out, but I waited while she finished the phone call and then dealt with another customer who had just walked in ! It's getting better. I realised after a short while that this must have been the continuation of a previous contact or query, so when that was all wrapped up, though evidently not completely to the customer's satiafaction, she turned to me. The cost for the eight days turned out initially to be $241 for the basic car, but when I mentioned I would also want a GPS, the price of the basic car dropped to $201 with a max charge of $45 for the GPS. She also mentioned that they have a graduated plan for LDW. I could simply pay $12 per day and that would cover me for up to $3000 of damage. So the comparative figures here are $201 for the car, GPS at $45 and LDW at $72, a total of $318 and around $39 per day.
That package sounded good to me, but there was one further stop.
I walked on down to Amherst Road on the way back home and called into the Enterprise Rent a Car agency. The fellow there recognised my accent and told me his mother was from Adelaide and that he had all sorts of NOK around the country, including an "ant" somewhere north of Perth. Good.
His prices were the most outrageous at $293 for the basic car, $78 for the GPS and surprisingly, $129 for the LDW. I might have gotten that last figure wrong as I don't think I was paying too much attention, after realising he was coming last in the preference poll.
So I called Avis when I got back home and confirmed with them that I would pick up one of their cars on 4 Oct, though I will go back there shortly and make absolutely sure, because I don't think I made a connection with a responsible adult, when I made the call.
Marg and I spent the PM installing the sprinkler system and going into deep depression when I hooked up the hose to my six pop up sprinklers, only to find that the water pressure was insufficient to drive them all. After a pause while I composed myself and consulted SWMBO, I did the only thing I could do and subdivided the six into two groups of three. That has given each tri group a new lease on life and they now perform satisfactorily, with a lateral overlap and a spray which reaches the fence line.
