What if....

Whenever I fly to the UK, I invariably hire a car to get to wherever I am going. This Xmas, I was slow in booking and most companies were sold out apart from Dollar Thrifty, who have made it to Heathrow and are temporarily using a hotel car park….not the most glamorous of HQ’s but given what I paid compared to other companies, I could not complain.

It was the first time I rented from them, and it may be the last. It was awesome to get a brand new Golf, which was a great drive. Aside from a technical issue (the petrol cap was jammed shut!), it was a pleasant experience. My frustration with this one was over one of these cheeky clauses inserted.

A couple of years ago, car hire companies introduced an idea where you could buy a tank of fuel in advance and bring it back empty, or bring it back full. If you bought the tank in advance, you pay something like ten pence less than at the pumps...which sounds like a good deal. However, that is reliant on taking it back empty or as close as possible to empty. I always go for the 'fill the tank myself' option as it generally is cost effective – it is not easy to judge the miles per gallon/litre in a car you have never driven before.

Dollar insisted that it was a clause in the contract so I had no choice with this one for the first time ever. Therefore, that set me a challenge of taking the car back as empty as possible. I had to top it up with £20 to get down to London for my meeting and then I had a drive to my Heathrow hotel. When I packed up, the gauge was just above zero and the counter told me I had 5 miles left of petrol. The car rental place showed as 1.9 miles away which I had to drive in the morning. I went to bed wondering if I should take the chance and try leave the car virtually empty of petrol.

When I switched the car on the next morning, I lost my bottle when it said 0 miles to go on the petrol and I decided to pull into the petrol station close by. I added £3 of petrol. Who adds £3 of petrol? I was pretty sheepish paying, I can tell you that! Still, I refused to leave much in the tank.

After dropping the car off, I was wondering what if I had taken the chance and not topped it up, would I have got to the rental place? Would I have been spluttering down the road, coming to an eventual stop, then running a mile back to the petrol station, or even worse, pushing the car to the rental place? Given that I was so determined to leave it empty, I would like to think I would have pushed it the rest of the way out of spite, but I know deep down, that I would have been red-faced at pushing a petrol-free car into the car park. Who knows what would have happened. Had I not had a flight to catch, I may well have taken the risk, but it wasn’t the time nor the place.

I have written a number of times in the past about making decisions in my life, just as we all do. What if the Headmaster at John Smeaton did actually decide to expel me as he promised if I didn’t tell the truth about a misdemeanour? What if I decided to go to Durham University instead of Liverpool which I chose so I could see my beloved Everton each week? I do occasionally wonder what would have happened if I had not taken the £10k per year job at the Press Association when I left university and done something that I didn’t enjoy but was closer to my salary dreams. I do sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had not decided to do the Master. Life would have taken a whole different shape and direction. I have no real idea and in all honesty, none of it really matters. It is nothing more than intrigue as I would not change any of it. Regrets are overrated. Even if I wish I had somehow managed to get that car back to Dollar Thrifty without a cent of petrol inside.