Van Rental Now

I just have to let you know about this, because I hired a van to move stuff from my old office recently and was shocked by what I found. It’s a tough time when you know you’ve got to get a van, it’s going to be expensive and you’re thinking maybe you should not go to dinner with your wife that weekend: 1. because your going to sweating like crazy moving everything, and 2. because you’ll already have spent the money on the move - van included. Perhaps you play with the idea o asking a friend, but then if you want to keep them as friends you think twice. So in the end you start looking to see what you can get. Cheap as possible is the game, but then there’s all the extras, and damn it the last time you drove a van you nearly fell into the sea, and that was 5 years ago! How much is the insurance going to be?

And so it goes on until you realise how much of a hole you’re going to dig yourself into if you muck it up, or (and let’s face it most people are prone) have a small scrape or an accident because it’s such a whopper of a vehicle. So, this is where I was, and I had so many other things to worry about that I left it until the last minute, which isn’t a good idea because they know they got you then. Eventually a friend recommended a place nearby which was good and cheap - he wasn’t kidding either. The thing is for every slick van rental company with a franchise business model and clean staff who smile, there is another around the corner who doesn’t have the same self confidence because their carpets aren’t clean, the garage is a pit and the vehicles are not completely spotless. Clean yes, but for the pope? Maybe not. Anyway this was one of those van rental places. Now I should add at this point that I didn’t plan this I just found out by accident and got lucky, but there is a bit of a pattern to it (I later realized). I picked up a 16 ft van and got scared to death I was going to take the roof of inside the garage, and then with a few near misses got going and did my moving. However, on the second day, I very deftly managed to maneuver a tricky bit of driving and slamed a lamppost that was trying to escape me. Back of van - messed up. Well I could just see the five hundred smakers laid down for insurance vanish in front of me. But I had a job to do and I got on with it. Filled the tank up again, did some more moving, slept a bit and eventually by the end of day 2 got the van back to the garage with a nervous feeling that my credit card was about to be maxed out - again.

I parked the van, and got out and went to the desk. “Any bumps?”. “Erm, yes I had a bit of an accident”. So I tell the guy. The response I got was great. “Don’t worry about it, the van works but it’s an old model we all can’t wait until it’s gone - you did us a favour, I won’t charge you for the damage, and actually this van isn’t the one you were meant to have so it’s cheaper?’. I wasn’t feeling quite so bad now, and I asked him if I needed a van like this again could I get the same one and ‘help’ him a bit more. He told me just to ask - if they still had it I could take it. So really, in a nut shell this is the moral of the story. Ask around and ask those difficult questions, like ‘Have you got any old vans?’, ‘Do you have any cheaper models?’, ‘I’m not after the top model, what’s the cheapest you’ve got - any going out of commission I’ll take that’. Once you start asking questions and talking about what’s going on for them you’d be surprised what you might dig up, so it’s worth calling around a bit to see if a cheap deal lands in your lap and you get your van rental for a really good price. Try it you might be surprised.