Conversions and stupid people

Last week I got to experience one of the most entertaining situations that happens to those of us that sit behind the rental counter - a conversion.  For those of you that don't know what a conversion is, it is when the rental company loses control of a vehicle while out on rent, in other words, the customer either steals the car or decides not to bring it back.

While most conversions aren't that exciting, this one in particular happened to be quite comical.

It started out with the customer coming in late at night swearing the Manager told her she could pay half cash and  half with a debit card. While most rental companies do not accept debit cards, we do and since she had her name on the card the Asst Manager allowed her to rent the vehicle.  When she didn't return the vehicle on the scheduled return date I called her to see how long she was planning on keeping it so I could extend her contract accordingly.  While in the process of extending it, I noticed that her credit/debit card declined the additional authorization, it happens, I let her know this and that's when we found out that it was a pre-paid card.  She told me that she would put more money on the card within 2 hours. Five hours later I tried to run the card again - still declined.  While this is normally not a problem, something didn't seem right with this rental.  For the next week we talked to her everyday and she told us stories varying from "I'm getting on the road right now and I'll be there in 3 hours." to "We're back in town and can you just come get the car."

Over that week, we told her that we needed additional authorizations on her card to bring her current for the charges accumulating on the contract, and that she needed to bring that vehicle back since it was already sold back to a dealer.  After hearing her stories and lies day after day we finally put our foot down.  She was told that a demand letter was being sent to her and if she did not return the vehicle to a branch in the next two days, it would be reported stolen and she would be arrested.  That didn't seem to phase her or her boyfriend from telling us the car would be returned everyday we talked to them.  The last contact I had with her was when she was on the phone telling me she had put $1000 on her card and was 'allowing' us to run the card so she could keep the car.  The conversation was quite entertaining for me.

Her: I'm at the bank right now
Me: What bank are you at?
Her: The one in Montana
Me: Where in Montana?
Her (whispering to her boyfriend): They want to know where we are...
Boyfriend (in the background assuming I can't hear her or him): Tell them whatever the F**k you need to tell them to keep the car
Her(to me): Are we going to get another car when we bring this one in?
Me: we can talk about that when you get here, but right now I have to have this vehicle back.
Her(relaying the message to the Boyfriend): they said we have to bring it back before we can talk about a different car.
Boyfriend(in the background): That's bullshit, tell them we're on the way, just so they leave us alone.
Her(to me): Okay, we'll be there in an hour.

While normally at this point things would have gotten ugly, because clearly they are lying and have no intention on returning the vehicle, but none of us at the office were too worried about it. The process that we have to follow to regain control and ultimately possession of our vehicle had begun and the beauty of this situation is the particular one they were in had OnStar.  Now, we've all heard the commercials about stolen vehicle recovery with OnStar. In this case we were half excited that we might get to use this feature and see if the commercials are accurately portraying the events that take place.

We unfortunately didn't get to find out just how amazing OnStar works in situations like this, but the way we got the vehicle back was almost a little more rewarding.  Finally on Tuesday we had quite enough of the lying and had given the amount of time required by law before we could report the car stolen.  After spending a couple hours on the phone, and jumping through the hoops with the police, my manager finally got the police to give the renter a call.  They told her she had 1 hour to return the vehicle to the nearest branch or the car would be considered a stolen vehicle. In that case she would not pass go, and go straight to jail, and the fine would be considerably higher than $200.

We got a call from one of the Spokane branches that was already in the loop on the situation.  They said she opened the door to the branch threw the keys at the counter and ran out the door.  Who does that???

I find it quite amusing that someone that provides us their personal information such as address, credit card, and most importantly Driver's License would try to steal one of our cars.  How stupid do you have to be to think that you could get away with that? Oh well, it's renters like her that keep me entertained.