Beth and I had planned a nice day in the Bronx today: first a trip to Coty Island for lunch and then a visit to the new York Botanical Gardens to see Kiku. However our plans were stymied when Zipcar lost the I had reserved. The nearest replacement they could offer us was in Queens, and it would have taken us almost as long to get there as to get to the Bronx in the first place.
It was a real comedy of errors: at first the garage attendant didn’t believe our car existed. Then we convinced him it did, he claimed it wasn’t in the garage. We called Zipcar on my cell phone, and they claimed the previous renter had checked it in at 11:00 last night. However the attendant still couldn’t find it. Zipcar called the garage while on the phone with me. On my line Zipcar was telling us that the car was there and that the garage said the car was there, while we could clearly hear the attendant on the phone telling Zipcar the car wasn’t at the garage. I’m not sure who we were talking to.
While we’re trying to figure all this out, another woman shows up to pick up her car. The attendant brings out the wrong car. After he points out that this isn’t the car she reserved, he then tells her that her car isn’t in the garage either so she gets on the phone too. Fortunately for her, the car she was supposed to have is just late, and drives into the garage five minutes later. That doesn’t help us much though.
When we gave up about half an hour after our reservation was supposed to start, Zipcar was trying to locate the previous renter to see if they could explain what happened to the car. However as far as I can tell it has been abducted by aliens.
We ended up going to Teddy’s Greek restaurant on Washington Ave. instead of City Island, and flying kites in Prospect Park instead of looking at chrysanthemums in the Bronx. I’ve had worse Sunday afternoons, but I am glad this wasn’t anything too important. Zipcar is clearly oversubscribed in New York, and really needs to hold some cars as backups. Right now you really can’t count on getting a car when you need one, even with a reservation made a week in advance.
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