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F and J, If you two are reading this at "T's Towing" in Southborough, your office is now on my mom's holiday pie list.
BG: Mom, myself, and two ladies from her knitting group rented a car and went to Rhinebeck NY over the weekend for the sheep and wool fair. I don't knit but we always have a lot of fun. For the purposes of this post "C" is the driver/person who rented the car.
We were about 20 minutes out from Boston on the Mass Pike (return trip) when the rental car stopped dead. Luckily, we were in the far right lane anyway and C had noticed something unusual so we were just into the breakdown lane; when the engine stopped the steering locked up so we couldn't have moved further off the road even if we wanted to. Fuel gauge showed 60+ miles remaining--and the range would go up each time she tried to turn the engine over--so there was clearly something wrong with it. I was Googling that model out of curiosity and found a voluntary recall relating to the fuel control; mom suspected when we started out back in Boston that there was something wrong with the car.
Big rigs were zooming by less than two feet from the driver side so we pile out the passenger side ASAP while C is on the phone to the rental company ("Why are you getting out? It's cold out there." "You feel the car wobbling when a truck goes by at 75MPH? I'd rather be cold and alive than warm and dead.") and go to wait near the guardrail. The car died at one of the 'official vehicles only' access roads so we had room to get well away from the car; I was waiting for something to clip it and send it flying down the embankment (then mom probably would have sent me into the trees to retrieve her yarn).
The rental company was useless; when C called their roadside assistance she was told by some guy in Orlando "Oh, just call a cab; they pick people up from the highway all the time." Not in the Northeast on a state road; he knew damn well where we were. Mom calls the state police and they dispatch a tow truck (rental company apparently did too, but we could not stay on the highway and it was getting dark; we trust the staties more than the car company).
It only took about 20 minutes before two flatbeds show up on the access road. They hook the car on one and we pile into the cabs (the cops dispatched two trucks because there were four of us and they legally couldn't leave anyone there). I got to ride in a big-ass tow truck
One of the tow drivers was positively gleeful when C told them where she got it from: "Great! We charged them $450 to pick up one of their cars last week and this one is gonna be stored for an extra day!" Originally he brought the car to a gas station as C wanted to "put some more gas in and see if it starts" but we managed to convince her that not only was it the rental company's problem, even if she did get it started again there was no guarantee we would be as lucky the next time it stopped (which it would). They were all too happy to store the car and dropped us off at the fast food place across the highway (as our driver F said: "No way am I leaving four lovely ladies at a gas station!") to wait for mom's "cranky old man" to pick us up.
We didn't get home until after 9 (left Rhinebeck at 3-something). Other than that, the trip was fun (except for C not understanding why everyone else needs more than 4 hours of sleep and not checking the location of a restaurant near the hotel so it was 20 minutes walk in the cold each way).
BG: Mom, myself, and two ladies from her knitting group rented a car and went to Rhinebeck NY over the weekend for the sheep and wool fair. I don't knit but we always have a lot of fun. For the purposes of this post "C" is the driver/person who rented the car.
We were about 20 minutes out from Boston on the Mass Pike (return trip) when the rental car stopped dead. Luckily, we were in the far right lane anyway and C had noticed something unusual so we were just into the breakdown lane; when the engine stopped the steering locked up so we couldn't have moved further off the road even if we wanted to. Fuel gauge showed 60+ miles remaining--and the range would go up each time she tried to turn the engine over--so there was clearly something wrong with it. I was Googling that model out of curiosity and found a voluntary recall relating to the fuel control; mom suspected when we started out back in Boston that there was something wrong with the car.
Big rigs were zooming by less than two feet from the driver side so we pile out the passenger side ASAP while C is on the phone to the rental company ("Why are you getting out? It's cold out there." "You feel the car wobbling when a truck goes by at 75MPH? I'd rather be cold and alive than warm and dead.") and go to wait near the guardrail. The car died at one of the 'official vehicles only' access roads so we had room to get well away from the car; I was waiting for something to clip it and send it flying down the embankment (then mom probably would have sent me into the trees to retrieve her yarn).
The rental company was useless; when C called their roadside assistance she was told by some guy in Orlando "Oh, just call a cab; they pick people up from the highway all the time." Not in the Northeast on a state road; he knew damn well where we were. Mom calls the state police and they dispatch a tow truck (rental company apparently did too, but we could not stay on the highway and it was getting dark; we trust the staties more than the car company).
It only took about 20 minutes before two flatbeds show up on the access road. They hook the car on one and we pile into the cabs (the cops dispatched two trucks because there were four of us and they legally couldn't leave anyone there). I got to ride in a big-ass tow truck
One of the tow drivers was positively gleeful when C told them where she got it from: "Great! We charged them $450 to pick up one of their cars last week and this one is gonna be stored for an extra day!" Originally he brought the car to a gas station as C wanted to "put some more gas in and see if it starts" but we managed to convince her that not only was it the rental company's problem, even if she did get it started again there was no guarantee we would be as lucky the next time it stopped (which it would). They were all too happy to store the car and dropped us off at the fast food place across the highway (as our driver F said: "No way am I leaving four lovely ladies at a gas station!") to wait for mom's "cranky old man" to pick us up.
We didn't get home until after 9 (left Rhinebeck at 3-something). Other than that, the trip was fun (except for C not understanding why everyone else needs more than 4 hours of sleep and not checking the location of a restaurant near the hotel so it was 20 minutes walk in the cold each way).
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