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Old Feb 1, 2019, 4:36 pm
  #5  
timol
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Switzerland
Programs: BA Gold, LH Sen, Bonvoy Plat
Posts: 841
The rental car facilities are still in the parking lot area.

The tag system with Hertz works fine on Rte 68. Every toll station seemed to have a “manual” lane for cash payments.

That was the good news. The not quite so good news are the flat tyre tricksters around SCL:

  • just before entering Rte 68, at a narrow curve, the car in front of us stops for a few seconds, for a young chap to get his “forgotten” bag from the trunk. Your attention goes to the events in front of you and it is unlikely to notice what happens behind
  • a couple of minutes later on Rte 68, a strange sound from rear right. Take next exit to chech what is wrong. Fortunately, a bus stop not far away provides a good opportunity to stop. Another car also had stopped there.
  • Right rear tyre flat. A chap from the already stopped car walks past and asks if we need assistance in calling for help
  • Sniffing trouble, I say “no, I have my (Hertz) phone numbers to calll”. However, for each Hertz number on the contract, an automated voice probably says “number does not exist”. Now what do I do in 33C with a flat tyre and without Spanish skills?
  • Miraculously another guy with quite good English appears and starts to search the tools for changing the tyre. The biggest benefit of this is that I would have never known to locate some of tools from under the driver’s seat. The first guy still hangs around, dealing with the “warning triangles” etc.
  • Both guys make subtle attempts to make my wife active in various activities, but she is careful and stays next to the car, watching for our belongings
  • somehow, as I feel relatively comfortable operating the lever and my wife has her hawk’s eye on our belongings, the English speaker says he needs to leave and the rest of the work is for us
  • only at that moment it dawned to me how the quick stop on entering Rte 68 had been orchestrated to allow someone from the car behind us to use a kife to damage our tyre
  • later at Hertz, we learn that the phone numbers printed on their contract sheet are no longer valid, due do some arrangement changes
  • summary: thanks to my wife’s attention, we only lost a couple of hours but nothing else. The car had (contrary to my usual habits) a full coverage. Once the awkwardly located tools had been found, I quickly recovered my tyre changing skills not used since the 1980s. We are now much wiser to face the next tricksters
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