Tuesday, February 24, 2009

taking Hertz's "fuel purchase option" at CMH (Columbus OH)

(... or "a cheapskate's repentance") Maybe you've been there -- you're at the car rental counter and the clerk asks if you want to take the fuel purchase option. What this means is, you buy a full tank of gas from the rental agency -- which is probably more gas than you need.

If you don't do that, then you either (1) allow however much extra time it takes to find a gas station and fill the tank; or (2) pay them $7.98/gallon for them to top off the tank for you. I'm so cheap that I almost always do (1), but this time I didn't because I thought we might be rushed on our way back to Columbus... plus there's no gas near the airport (well, there's some due north, but we wouldn't be coming back that way).

The other thing was: they were going to charge me $27 to fill the tank. Being from California, I thought that ridiculously cheap.

So there ya go. We are done with our college visits in Ohio, and so it turns out we would have had plenty of time to get gasoline. But the fuel purchase option was a prepay, so I paid Hertz about $27 whereas I probably could have topped off the tank for $15 or less.

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