2019-01-28 Mon

First: Catch Your Truck ...

... Miss Hannah Glasse would not have said.

Back on Thursday, October 25, 2018, Tippet-Richardson had quoted me $9,014 once all the subtle add-ins are added, subtle meaning that while the books got carried to Bonavista, I had to fly Air Canada, cab from the airport, rent a car, drive to Bonavista, return the car to Clarenville, get back (walk?) to Bonavista, ...

I phoned UHaul who quoted me $2,081 “if you lock in now”. I am always suspicious of offers of the form “lock in now”, so I refused; I have three months to think about this. (later: This turned out to be the bare-bones quote issued in U.S.A. dollars). Enterprise does not rent trucks one-way. UHaul charges $350 unless I drop it off in Clarenville.

I mulled until Thursday, November 15, 2018 when I set off to UHaul and met with Charles OKBaidoo who cheers up immensely when he looks up “Clarenville” and realizes that $2K+ of business has just walked into his basement office. His business card reads “Underground Computers Inc.” What better way to disguise a computing business than to have a dozen or so UHaul vehicles strewn around the yard? “Damage waiver is $129”, remember this figure.

On Friday, January 04, 2019 I booked the truck. Pick up 6p-8p Monday 28th January, return on or after 3:00 p.m. Tuesday 5th February. I update my spreadsheet to reflect the new price of 2,647, plus tax, plus insurance ($139) which comes to $3,148. Note that insurance has risen by ten dollars. Sigh!

So today at 2:00 p.m. I called Charles and nervously confirmed for a 6 p.m. pickup tonight. Charles cheerfully agrees, although the snow has been falling since noon. At the streetcar stop around 5:30 I learn that the next streetcar should arrive in fifteen minutes, this being peak-hour in Toronto, and I decide to risk slipping and falling, and so set off on foot. Sure enough, as soon as my back is turned a streetcar glides to the stop. I end-run the swarm of would-be riders and cram my way on as the last person able to board, having learned that trick during 2˝ years on the Paris Metro.

Charles is not in. The thin young man, who I shall label “Idiot1”, says Charles left the west end at 3:30 and should be here by 6:30. Snow is thickening and I reason that if it has taken three hours to make a nominal half-hour trip, Charles in not likely to arrive tonight at all. Do I walk back home and cry, or do I start crying right here? James, my able-bodied helper, is waiting at home to start loading, snow or no snow.

Charles bounces in at 6:30, all smiles, “Yes, just get the mileage and fill out the slip and he’s ready to go.” Idiot1 shuffles, grumbling, back out into the blizzard. Later on it strikes me as odd that they don’t have the mileage written down somewhere. They must have read the odometer when the truck was returned-to-store, no? Idiot1 shuffles back in, fills out a 3-part six inch pad, and thrusts it at me with a frozen mumble “Just initial here and you’re free to go”.

I am as disenchanted with “Just initial here and you’re free to go” as I am with “if you lock in now”, so I ask “What am I initialing”? “Oh, just the insurance waivers”. I peer closely through my spectacles and see three check boxes, all pre-printed checked ON. Huh? The first box says “Damage to the truck”. I’m OK with that. Toronto’s heaviest snowfall of the season and all. The second is “Contents”, so I protest. If the ferry sinks on the six-hour crossing, who wants to claim ownership of thirty cartons of second-hand books and twenty guppies? I object strongly to the Death And Dismemberment clause, because I am not in the habit of putting down cash on a gamble betting that I will die. I mean, if I win (by dying), how will I get to enjoy the payoff?

The insurance is $179. Odd! I demand to see the application which we submitted January 4th and whose emailed link I clicked on and whose 3 -page PDF document I printed out. Idiot1 grunts to Charles who (busy elsewhere) says “Just get it on the computer”, so we move to a computer screen and I give my name, phone number, street address, and start to grow uneasy as Idiot1 keys in all this data. I fell in love with computers back in May 1967 when I learned that computers were good at doing boring and repetitive things. Typing in my name, address, phone number etc again is Boring and Repetitive. Well, repetitive at any rate.

So I object.

“But you already have this data on file!” forgetting that I am dealing with Idiot1, who ploughs on anyway. He is right. Sitting in a warm office pecking away is way better than shoveling snow off trucks out in the yard on a dark winter night. Finally we have a completed seven-page screen form, where, at 7pm, the total shows up as $6,089. This is a tad higher than $3,148 and represents my dis-association of the expense of a breakfast of waffles and bacon breakfast along the road.

I object.

Charles recommends keying in a new application. Several hen-picking minutes later we arrive at $6,089, so at least the inflation has ceased. Finally Charles comes across to show how it must be done. He gets $6,089. It is a tiny office and Idiot1 can hear my exclamation, to Charles’s dismay. Charles tries again, twice again, in fact, then reaches for the phone “I’ll call Head Office (they of “if you lock in now” fame) Charles explains that the quote has ballooned, we wait, then he says “Oh! I’ll close it now!” and clicks on the five application windows which we have managed to accumulate. I take heart that back in Arizona, some “Record in Use” message box must have popped up on the screen. “Thank you” says Charles, to the telephone handset, smiles at me “They’ve changed it”.

We clickety-click and Voila!, as I would say were I somewhere nice. $6,089. Mutter-mutter. Clickety-click. $6,089. Charles picks up the phone, calls Head Office again, blah-blah-blah, hangs up the phone, tries again. $6,089. Phones a third time, humbly says “Thank you; Yes. I understand” and turns to me, sadly, in a low tone “She told me not to call back again”.

With my rapid mental intellect I reason that either Head Office is totally unsupportive of regional franchisees or Charles has been making a lot of calls to Head Office in the past few days, weeks, lifetimes (this is surely not his first incarnation. Some client must have shot him before now). Neither thought fills me with confidence.

We close everything, start a new application and I tap Charles on the arm, for he has been trained to “Just click on the green Next button” and does not read the screens. I introduce Charles to the concept of the Back button, and we make a sort of five-point turn as he goes back too far, forward too far, back not quite as far, forward one screen too many, and finally Back to the screen that shows the base rate as $5,284, twice the January 4th base rate of $2,642. I ask “Don’t you think that’s odd, that it is exactly twice what it was?”, for I have a mathematics degree from The University of Western Australian and have mastered my two-times-table up to the high thousands. Charles thinks not, so I know for certain that I’m on to something here.

With a desperate whimper Charles concedes “I’ll have to call my boss”, which he does, responding to offline questions as I jab my finger at written figures such as “$3,148” and “$6,089”, not to mention “January 4th 2019” and “6 p.m. January 28th”. There is much “Uhhuh”ing and “Right”-ing from the chair to my right. Then “He’s going to change the invoice himself”. Next they need my credit-card number and email address. Ask yourself, as did I, “Is this the sort of outfit to which I’d give my credit-card and email address?”. I am numbed. James is waiting at home to start loading. My dreams of pulling onto Yonge Street around ten p.m. have faded. I hand over the credit-card and email while hissing “I want a hard-copy statement or receipt”.

Charles passes the phone to me so I can speak with his other boss, a gentleman whose perfect English explains that: since I booked the truck twenty-four days ago, far too many customers have been renting one-way trucks and driving them to Newfoundland. Newfoundland, whose cod stocks have been depleted, now has a glut of fifteen-foot UHaul rental trucks, and so, to deter customers, UHaul has upped the ante to $5,284 in a desperate attempt to stop people from renting trucks (from UHaul) to drive to Newfoundland. I have to confess that at half-past seven, it sure is making me feel as if I’d never like to be a UHaul customer again.

Poor Charles. I have migrated roles. I am no longer an eager customer anxious to get on my way. I have reverted to my native style and am now keen on finding how many flaws exist in their computer system. Here’s one! “Renter is not the driver”, checked ON. “But I am the driver!” “Yes, but you are driving it all by yourself; there is not a second driver who is not the renter, who is you!” But wait a minute; I’m the renter, right? Right. And I am going to drive the truck to Newfoundland – assuming there is space on The Rock for one more truck – right? Right! So in this case, the renter IS the driver, right? No. What this box means is that you do not have a second driver. “But what this box SAYS is that the person renting the truck is NOT the person driving the truck”. A brilliant thought flashes across ye olde synapses. “Tell you what, Charles; you come with me and help me drive to Newfoundland, and then you can drive the truck back here!” I am regretting that suggestion before I have completed the sentence.

A receipt will be emailed to me within sixty seconds. How quickly these computer-equipped firms can rack up credit-card debt! I tell Charles I want access to their WiFi, so he wanders across to the electrical panel; squints, calls out a password (of the usual tamper-proof form “17fg56trz” variety), but gets it wrong, I see. He tries again and this time he gets it right, and there is my emailed receipt

Note the fuel gauge reading. I am setting off on a 3,000Km drive tonight?

Charles explains that he has (graciously) extended the days to ten, because I have consistently pointed out that I am at the mercy of blizzards, white-outs, highway wrecks, ferry cancellations etc. You will note as did I that I might have unwittingly been self-adding chunks of $40 and $0.40 to my bill. Sigh!

Too you will note that “Total Charges” says $5,423”. Unlike me you will probably not slap your forehead and shout “What?!!???”. Were Charles French he would soothe me with “Soit calme, mon brave” and another espresso, but he isn’t and I haven’t been offered my first one yet. This is UHaul’s Marketing ploy: Render the customer incredulous to the point where their voice grows hoarse, and then disappears, so that they can no longer object, and there is nothing left to do but “Just initial here and you’re free to go”. Charles points to the second last line that reads “Credit card payment” and $3,104 (his boss has implemented a January 28th branch-office special discount (to West Australians only) of $2,642), and as a counter-ploy I point to the significant word “Today” in the last line.

I could have been a lawyer, and then I wouldn’t have to persuade a lawyer in Clarenville to meet me in a donut shop Sunday supper-time, away from wife and kids, to sign documents. For sure, I will not be leaving Toronto tonight. We all three stagger out into the blizzard where the truck engine is running. I ask to inspect the interior, but the roll-up door won’t. Idiot1 is told to get a bucket of hot water, which he can’t do until Charles has finished relieving himself and the hot-tap gets around to delivering hot water. Which is poured over the back of the truck to melt the inch-thick layer of ice which has sealed the door shut.

You think I am making this up, don’t you? Well, I’m not.

I always keep penciled notes on the grounds that “If it ain’t written down, it don’t exist”.

I escaped the Evil Empire at 7:45, an hour and a half behind my child-like schedule. Takes 15 minutes to drive what is a 20-minute walk (I’ve done that walk twice a week for seven years), and I park the truck in our driveway and phone James. He agrees that it is too late and too snowy to start loading, so I take him to Fran’s on College for fish-and-chips to celebrate our completion of loading the truck. Go Figure. We are on track for 20cm of snow, which is nothing anywhere else in The Great White North, but in Toronto it is sudden death, because Toronto drivers are taught that if you floor the gas pedal, you will ultimately melt enough snow and ice to reach the tarmac, (at which time you move forwards three centimetres and can repeat the process). Where were these people when we needed them, back when the Wisconsin Ice-Sheet dominated the area?

My belief, I now remember, is backed up by Idiot1’s last bit of advice “Keep it in low gear”, whereas every Yilgarn-trained driver knows you want the highest gear possible to obtain the lowest torque possible and so reduce the engine’s ability to lose traction by spinning the wheels.

I’LL SOON BE GONE and you can click on the links in Tuesday's entry to learn what I mean.

Back to James. Like me he is an early riser. “Three a.m.?” I ask. “Four”. We agree that he will phone me when he is ready, but he doesn’t. I go to bed, and am awake at four in the morning.