23 ms·

My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

176 points by caymanjim 7y ago

bb101 7y ago
"But since I flew into O’Hare on a commercial flight, like a common schmuck, Hertz wouldn’t give me the car, even though they clearly had it to give. Basically, I wasn’t rich enough to rent the car Hertz had allowed me to reserve, so they weren’t going to let me have it. Which, I don’t know. Seems like a real dick move on Hertz’s part, and doesn’t incline me to use them ever again for anything." The author's experience with Hertz mirrors my own experiences with them. Much like using UPS, they are an absolute last choice for us. We have a saying in our house: "It's called Hertz because it hurts."
- mycall 7y ago
  To finish your saying: Would you like a hertz donut? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7P7BFBWQ1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7P7BFBWQ1E
- jeron 7y ago
  Every time I think of Hertz I think of how Accenture royally fucked them in their website redesign: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/23/hertz_accenture_lawsuit/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/23/hertz_accenture_law...
  - PhantomGremlin 7y ago
    The salty language of these last few comments reminds me of the old FuckedCompany.com website. A guy named "Pud" ran it, and it was great. But I guess he got bored with it. He'd write about Accenture back in the days. And when he did he'd always say: Accenture (pronounced ass-enter). Sigh. Apologies in advance if this is drifting too much into Reddit territory. As for that website redesign, I bet that USA Accenture shipped the actual work off to some third world country, probably India. It seems like standard modus operandi to get stuff back from India that only attempts to meet the bare minimum. E.g. as the article notes, just hardwire Hertz specific stuff, so can't easily deal with sister companies like Dollar and Thrifty. It's a difficult problem to solve with outsourcing. You'll rarely get any sense of ownership from them. And why would you expect any?
    - erik_seaberg 7y ago
      Pud used to post here. They started selling ads on fucked company and realized there was money in adtech. Now he's over at distrokid.
sharadov 7y ago
What a great story? I always ask Lyft/Uber drivers about interesting stories. One told me how he picked up 3 girls outside of a fancy condo in LA and drove them to Vegas which is about 300 miles and a 5 hr ride. Turns out the girls were drunk and the condo guy had called for a ride to take them home, And they decided they rather go to Vegas to continue the party ;-)
- umeshunni 7y ago
  Wouldn't the person who called the Lyft be the one entering the destination?
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    I would imagine he handed his phone over and said "put in your address".
    - sharadov 7y ago
      That makes sense, unless he was so sloshed that he had no idea what he was doing!
    - jandrese 7y ago
      Yeah, this is exactly how I imagined it. They punch in "Caesar's Palace" then hit "yes", "Accept", and "Charge my stored card" before handing the phone back to the guy. Then the guy is wondering how in the hell he got a $500 charge from Lyft on his credit card statement at the end of the month.
  - sharadov 7y ago
    If you are a single dude partying with 3 hot chicks, you will get them a ticket to the moon if they so desire! He was probably way too drunk or he just did not care!
  - kelnos 7y ago
    This may have been in the days before you were required to enter the destination up front and could just tell the driver when you got in the car.
exabrial 7y ago
I was hoping I'd get to know the total in case this ever happens to me!
- acemarke 7y ago
  > Turns out it would cost about $330. Which, as it happens, was only a little bit more than what it would have cost for that one-way rental that Hertz wasn’t going to give me even though they had the car. > When I got home I tipped him hugely So, figure maybe $375-400?
  - OrangeMango 7y ago
    Couple of years ago there was a professional football player that took an Uber from O'Hare to Buffalo, NY for just under $1000 to make it practice on time. Anyway, this guy could have taken a Megabus to from Chicago to Cincinnati for $25 and then done a rideshare the rest of the way. It would have been far less expensive.
    - skinnymuch 7y ago
      If making it on time to practice is really important, do you want to depend on a bus? Bus Being late to pick up or leave isn’t uncommon. I assume if something goes wrong along the way you should be able to get off with your stuff without too much trouble and order a ride. But if there’s a big traffic jam. And you might be able to save some time taking inside roads or what have you. A bus isn’t going to do that. You also won’t be able to order a ride share if you’re on the highway with traffic packed up. I think the situation depends on how important making practice is. Sometimes you’re already on thin ice.
      - jeromegv 7y ago
        Yep. And for someone making millions, the cost of the ride is negligible.
        7y ago
kevin_b_er 7y ago
The utter inability to get a one-way rental is quite obnoxious. Also the bit about how he was able to reserve a car, but he wasn't a charter flight. Hertz's utter incompetence on the phone was striking as well from some sort of bizarro catch-22 world.
- jandrese 7y ago
  That seems like normal this-world Hertz incompetence to me. The best and brightest people do not sign up to stand behind a booth at a car rental agency.
  - morganvachon 7y ago
    > The best and brightest people do not sign up to stand behind a booth at a car rental agency. According to the article, the guy behind the counter at Hertz agreed with the author about their insane charter flight policy, and tried to help him fix the situation, but was powerless. The red tape was all above his head and much of the confusion/frustration was on the phone with customer support.
    - adamson 7y ago
      If anything, the "best and brightest" folks in Hertz management who drafted the policies that both the phone assistant and the person behind the counter had to try to navigate (and who both acknowledged the policies they were struggling against were dumb) are the ones who failed big time here, not the every men that GP is insulting.
      - brianpgordon 7y ago
        To be clear though, I doubt that someone in Hertz management sat down and devised this scenario deliberately to save a few bucks, hoping that nobody with social media clout would ever run into it. My guess is that it's the result of a web of misaligned incentives and organizational cruft that resulted in a creaky but mostly-working system that nobody ever fixed. You can use your imagination to fill in the details for fun - maybe 8 years ago some stressed-out shift manager without enough people to work the rental desk (due to a freak corporate-mandated hiring freeze) got a call asking for updated contact information for his location and he hesitated a moment and the caller, a temp on loan for the day, helpfully suggested that they just leave the extension blank for now, and marked the location done. And over the next 8 years the company was making its numbers and there was no need to rock the boat and dump a bunch of money into management consultants to tear everything up and start over fresh, and the VP of airports just had a grandkid and was letting his lieutenants run things on autopilot, and the CEO was happy as a clam with his 2pm golf games and expensed steak dinners and had no idea that anything was wrong, etc etc etc etc. The WSJ exposé following Hertz's surprise Chapter 11 filing practically writes itself.
ryanmercer 7y ago
I: - Wish I drove for Lyft - Lived in Chicago - Had gotten him as a passenger After 10-15 miles I would have said "So Mr. Scalzi, I'm going to need you to tell me what the Perry family is up to. Go ahead, I'll give you a few minutes to contemplate, but then you'd better get to telling me" then I'd have also inquired about the next in the Collapsing Empire series. Joking aside, I'm curious to see more from the driver. What did you think when you accepted the fare curbside aside from "I like long trips"? Did you stay at the destination for a night or immediately drive back? If you have a partner were they a bit upset? What's it like driving a stranger for 5 hours?
- ssully 7y ago
  Sounds like a modern telling of Misery
- jandrese 7y ago
  Does Lyft compensate you for the drive back to your home? I'm guessing not? Or do they seriously jack up the price if you go beyond a certain distance to compensate the drive for his almost certainly empty drive back?
  - lnanek2 7y ago
    You can tell the app where you want to end up after doing a bunch of trips, so the driver could just set his overall endpoint back to O'Hare and Lyft would try to give him rides going that way.
ilamont 7y ago
I followed this as it unfolded on his Twitter account (https://twitter.com/scalzi https://twitter.com/scalzi). He has a way of taking some small experience or observation and turning it into a great little story or one-liner. He's written some good sci-fi, too. Worth following.
- lancesells 7y ago
  Only after reading this article and then looking at his bio did I put together that this is the author of the Old Man's War series. I think I made it to the 4th or 5th book in the series and it's an enjoyable read
- Zanni 7y ago
  Also worth checking out: the comment from "toyko uber story" on an insane Black Car Uber ride in Japan (scroll down, it's currently 6th from the bottom).
  - uxamanda 7y ago
    Agreed! That story was an unexpectedly hilarious find in the comments. Direct link to that comment: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/07/23/my-300-mile-lyft-ride-from-chicago-to-bradford/#comment-865720 https://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/07/23/my-300-mile-lyft-ride...
bryanlarsen 7y ago
Since the driver would have had to dead head back to Chicago, if his expenses were a not unreasonable 0.50 cents per mile, the only profit the driver made was the tip.
- refurb 7y ago
  From talking to Lyft drivers, you can specify where your last ride takes you. I’ve heard of people doing that from Sacremento to SF and back. Now can you do that from Dayton to Chicago? I’d be interested to know. You could potentially piece a trip back together with a mix of rides and deadheads.
- gregkerzhner 7y ago
  If the driver drove 600 miles and his car got 25 miles to the gallon, at $3 a gallon his gas expenses would have only been $72. Of course there are other costs (maintenance, depreciation), but those also exists if you are just driving your car around town, and I think Uber / Lift's whole business model is based on the driver not really taking them into account. If the tip was $100, the driver would have walked away with $330 in cash after the drive - which is not bad for a 10 hour workday.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    $0.58 per mile is the standard IRS deduction for business use of a car, meant to fully encompass gas, maintenance, etc., which would suggest a total expected cost of about $348 if you include more than just gas.
    - rustguy 7y ago
      Even worse, that deduction is very conservative. Like, 1990 Ford Escort conservative. AFAIK, the business use deduction is almost always more if you list all your expenses on a percent-business basis compared to taking the $.58/mile.
    - colechristensen 7y ago
      It would but it isn't a great suggestion. If you're trying to optimize costs you can beat that by a huge factor. $0.58 per mile is about how much it costs to lease a car at $350/month and pay for gas, which is what you would do in an upper middle class job requiring lots of travel. So if you get a new, fairly nice car every three years and use it exclusively for Lyft, you won't make any money. If you want to make more money than zero, own your car for longer and do some of the maintenance yourself.
logfromblammo 7y ago
An interesting solution, but I probably would have tried a Penske box truck first. I wouldn't entirely trust a U-Haul to make it the full 300 miles without some kind of a mechanical problem, even when the box is empty except for my suitcase and carry-on. Moving truck rentals are better set-up to do one-way trips than the airport car rentals. Also, you won't get the airport surcharge. Might be a little more expensive than a car rental or the Lyft, but I guess you could always fill up the truck with Chicagoland-specific goods, if you wanted.
- refurb 7y ago
  I never would have thought of this, but it would likely work!
- jedberg 7y ago
  I see someone else has watched "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles".
  - logfromblammo 7y ago
    Or "Home Alone". Kenosha Kickers? Pol-ka, pol-ka...
khrbrt 7y ago
This is why we need a train system with funding parity to the highway and airport systems. There should be trains leaving constantly, at most every 10 minutes, from Chicago to the east, and frequent, semihourly, trains between neighboring cities along the way. Even if the author could rent a car, having to drive 300 miles is astounding waste of time and mental energy.
- f5thesystem 7y ago
  Ohio had plans to connect Toledo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus, however the Governor at the time turned down the federal money.
  - dexterdog 7y ago
    I'm sure it wasn't free. Federal money for stuff like that usually has strings attached.
    - kgermino 7y ago
      That actually was about as close to free as it gets. At least it was for the similar money (same program) that Wisconsin turned down. In Wisconsin’s case it was about $800MM with no local match needed and the catch was committing to running the service for 20 years. Even as someone who wasn’t a big fan of the project I’m still annoyed because we’ve now spent significantly more than 20 years of operating costs for work that would have been paid for if we took the money.
      - dexterdog 7y ago
        What was the cost of running it for 20 years (both reported and then times 3 for realistic forecast)
- refurb 7y ago
  I can’t imagine a train leaving every 10 minutes could ever be cost effective. There just aren’t that many people who want to do that trip (8 hours?) when you could do it in 2 hours by plane.
Causality1 7y ago
>(which hadn’t, in fact, told him the destination, just that it was more than 30 minutes away) That's disappointing. There are arguments for both sides of whether it should give the exact location but it ought to at least give the rough number of miles and rough travel time.
envy2 7y ago
This is a fun story—but he should've just booked a round-trip rental car, and dropped it off in Dayton anyway. I've done this a bunch of times, and all they'll do is charge you the one-way rate and grumble a bit... Better to ask forgiveness than permission.
- tyrust 7y ago
  I'd rather not risk being charged for whatever loss of use number they come up with as well.
  - envy2 7y ago
    At least for Hertz, they can charge you a grand total of $10 here (if you call them to change it) or otherwise $12/day per their T&C: https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/reservation/reviewmodifycancel/templates/rentalTerms.jsp?KEYWORD=RETURNCHANGE&EOAG=LAX https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/reservation/reviewmodifycance... "This fee of $10 will be applied if you return your car to a different location from that which was scheduled, or if you return more than 12 hours after the date and time previously scheduled, and you notify us of an extension of your rental by the return date and time previously scheduled by calling 1-800-654-4174. If you do not notify us of such a change, the Late Return Fee of $12 per day, (maximum of 5 days) will apply."
    - cldellow 7y ago
      Elsewhere, the contract notes: "Any changes to the reservation may impact the rental charges." Which is what will happen here. They'll charge you this fee, but also adjust the base rental charges to much higher rates that reflect the fleet management burden caused by one-way rentals.
      - envy2 7y ago
        Yes—they'll adjust the rate to the (much higher) one-way price. But there's no crazy "loss of use" fee like the parent comment suggested. In practice, the cost usually turns into around $0.37/mile, plus the daily rate, unless you have a corporate discount.
dhd415 7y ago
I did the same thing recently when a flight home from a weekend trip was diverted due to weather to an airport 150 miles away. All the rental cars were taken, of course. The next flight out was 8-10 hours away, I was dead tired and had important work obligations coming up. I made sure the Lyft driver knew what I was asking. He phoned his wife to tell her he'd be late getting off his usual shift and off we went. It's certainly not something I'd do often, but I'm glad it was an option then. As a related aside, I have a friend who frequently takes Uber/Lyft for trips from the CT suburbs to Boston since it often beats flying and the Acela train on both cost and time, especially if he's traveling with family members.
payne92 7y ago
The other hack is to “pony express” in stages: use Lyft/Uber to get part way or to a mid point, where you are confident you CAN get a rental, a train/bus, or another Lyft/Uber to keep going. This is especially useful if you can’t find a driver that will take you all the way.
- icebraining 7y ago
  That's a regular day for us non-car-owners. Nowadays you can even get combined routes with software like Citymapper and Rome2Rio.
- koolba 7y ago
  I got in short but very loud argument with an airport taxi driver when I did this to get dropped off just outside the airport taxi zone. The “real” ride was 5x the price at the airport taxi rate vs taking an Uber. The louder the driver got, the more I realized how good of decision it was to get the hell out of his car.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - em-bee 7y ago
    in my experience airport taxi drivers all hate short trips. we used to live near an airport, and taking a taxi home was always a nerve-racking moment in how the driver would take it. usually they were grumpy which made for a frustrating experience.
    - alexhutcheson 7y ago
      Often the taxi driver has waited for a long time (sometimes hours) in the airport queue for it to be their turn to get a fare. If you take a $5 ride they’re upset because they invested all that time for no payoff. I don’t think it’s wrong for the passenger to do this, but I understand why it’s frustrating for the driver.
bsder 7y ago
I have had far too many of these stories with Hertz. I simply will not use them anymore. Avis still seems to do right by me, and Avis seems to give their minions enough autonomy to actually fix the customer's problem. My biggest problem with car rental lately is simply that the cars absolutely suck. No backup cameras, no radars, no adaptive cruise, etc. unless you buy the ultra, turbo premium ones. They are rotating their fleets so slowly now that the cars are becoming way behind the curve. I have a secondary problem in that they are always trying to fob off the SUV onto me despite the fact that I didn't want anything bigger than mid-size.
fieryskiff1 7y ago
A Greyhound bus would have done a Chicago-Dayton in about 8 hours for about $50. I might prefer that bus to driving a rental car. 8 hours of nodding off rather than 5 hours of driving.
simonebrunozzi 7y ago
I would have not paid Lyft directly, but instead I would have negotiated with the driver (edit: yes, after having paid the initial few dollars to summon one).
- lanewinfield 7y ago
  And with that you most likely lose any sort of protection/insurance Lyft gives you.
  - jwr 7y ago
    What protection/insurance?
    - alasdair_ 7y ago
      > What protection/insurance? The protection/insurance that kicks in when you get in an accident or the driver decides after fifty miles that fuck it, they don't want to drive any more.
    - aianus 7y ago
      Uber rides where I live are covered by Uber's commercial insurance policy: https://uber.app.box.com/s/un77qysn3pl8v99i4r14k7jpw9ibm11i https://uber.app.box.com/s/un77qysn3pl8v99i4r14k7jpw9ibm11i
  - CamperBob2 7y ago
    Some people just gotta live on the edge, I guess
- jumbopapa 7y ago
  I've had multiple drivers give me a business card and ask me to call them when I need a ride and not use the app. I've never taken them up on it, but I assume they can offer a lower rate and still take home more money.
nchuhoai 7y ago
Here's a guy doing 2000+ miles on Uber, NC -> CA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR6Wh2Zy9jE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR6Wh2Zy9jE
d_burfoot 7y ago
Pro tip: when you request long rides in a ride-share app, give the driver a heads-up about where you're actually going before s/he arrives, so they have the option to cancel the request. They'll appreciate it, and generally won't cancel anyway.
YeahSureWhyNot 7y ago
the driver probably made around $200 from this ride which is more than how much he would have made working the whole day, except this time he mostly drove on a highway at steady speeds instead of dealing with 30 short distance rides and 30 different people. everybody wins
GlenTheMachine 7y ago
God, yes. The last three times I’ve had international flights, the puddle jumper connecting flights have been so delayed that I missed the connection. It seems like the big flights rarely get delayed, but God help you if you need to fly from, say DC to Philly (145 miles) or Baltimore to New York (250 miles). On my next-to-last trip, it took American 13 HOURS to get me from DC to Montreal (450 miles). And they lost my luggage. Literally, I could have taken the bus faster. It’s gotten so bad that I no longer take the puddle jumper flights. I now book to fly directly out of Dulles or Philly or New York and just drive there, or take Amtrak. It’s both faster and cheaper.
cozzyd 7y ago
He probably should have tried flying to Cincinnati or Columbus... Or taken the bus to Dayton (the blue line would have gotten him straight to the Greyhound station from the airport).
0xfaded 7y ago
My experience is that jet centers like Signature Flight Services (from the article) employ concierge people with superpowers. Once as a private pilot of a 4-seater derping above Colorado I needed to divert to Colorado Springs due to a developing thunderstorm and decided to hanger the airplane to not risk hail damage. Basically you ring an FBO like Signature (in this case Cutter Aviation), book some hangar space, and show up. Same problem though, flights were being cancelled out of Colorado Springs and every hotel and rental car was booked. It took an hour, but concierge arranged for TWO hertz employees to deliver a car from out of town. My rate was $25 with unlimited miles plus a bit extra for the hail damage waiver. I think the hangar was $50 for the night.
saxatrumpet 7y ago
Transportation in north America is more difficult than transportation within Europe for sure. I recently moved to Germany from Canada and have found it is much easier to get between locations with many options and price points available.
lutoma 7y ago
Reminds me of something that happened to a friend of mine once. He was booked on the last train from Cologne to Brussels for the day, but missed his connection due to a delay on an earlier train. Due to EU passenger rights regulations, train company was on the hook to get him there somehow, so they ended up paying a taxi to drive him across the Netherlands into Belgium.

176 points by caymanjim 7y ago

"But since I flew into O’Hare on a commercial flight, like a common schmuck, Hertz wouldn’t give me the car, even though they clearly had it to give. Basically, I wasn’t rich enough to rent the car Hertz had allowed me to reserve, so they weren’t going to let me have it. Which, I don’t know. Seems like a real dick move on Hertz’s part, and doesn’t incline me to use them ever again for anything." The author's experience with Hertz mirrors my own experiences with them. Much like using UPS, they are an absolute last choice for us. We have a saying in our house: "It's called Hertz because it hurts."

mycall 7y ago
To finish your saying: Would you like a hertz donut? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7P7BFBWQ1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7P7BFBWQ1E
jeron 7y ago
Every time I think of Hertz I think of how Accenture royally fucked them in their website redesign: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/23/hertz_accenture_lawsuit/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/23/hertz_accenture_law...
- PhantomGremlin 7y ago
  The salty language of these last few comments reminds me of the old FuckedCompany.com website. A guy named "Pud" ran it, and it was great. But I guess he got bored with it. He'd write about Accenture back in the days. And when he did he'd always say: Accenture (pronounced ass-enter). Sigh. Apologies in advance if this is drifting too much into Reddit territory. As for that website redesign, I bet that USA Accenture shipped the actual work off to some third world country, probably India. It seems like standard modus operandi to get stuff back from India that only attempts to meet the bare minimum. E.g. as the article notes, just hardwire Hertz specific stuff, so can't easily deal with sister companies like Dollar and Thrifty. It's a difficult problem to solve with outsourcing. You'll rarely get any sense of ownership from them. And why would you expect any?
  - erik_seaberg 7y ago
    Pud used to post here. They started selling ads on fucked company and realized there was money in adtech. Now he's over at distrokid.

sharadov 7y ago

What a great story? I always ask Lyft/Uber drivers about interesting stories. One told me how he picked up 3 girls outside of a fancy condo in LA and drove them to Vegas which is about 300 miles and a 5 hr ride. Turns out the girls were drunk and the condo guy had called for a ride to take them home, And they decided they rather go to Vegas to continue the party ;-)

umeshunni 7y ago
Wouldn't the person who called the Lyft be the one entering the destination?
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  I would imagine he handed his phone over and said "put in your address".
  - sharadov 7y ago
    That makes sense, unless he was so sloshed that he had no idea what he was doing!
  - jandrese 7y ago
    Yeah, this is exactly how I imagined it. They punch in "Caesar's Palace" then hit "yes", "Accept", and "Charge my stored card" before handing the phone back to the guy. Then the guy is wondering how in the hell he got a $500 charge from Lyft on his credit card statement at the end of the month.
- sharadov 7y ago
  If you are a single dude partying with 3 hot chicks, you will get them a ticket to the moon if they so desire! He was probably way too drunk or he just did not care!
- kelnos 7y ago
  This may have been in the days before you were required to enter the destination up front and could just tell the driver when you got in the car.

exabrial 7y ago

I was hoping I'd get to know the total in case this ever happens to me!

acemarke 7y ago
> Turns out it would cost about $330. Which, as it happens, was only a little bit more than what it would have cost for that one-way rental that Hertz wasn’t going to give me even though they had the car. > When I got home I tipped him hugely So, figure maybe $375-400?
- OrangeMango 7y ago
  Couple of years ago there was a professional football player that took an Uber from O'Hare to Buffalo, NY for just under $1000 to make it practice on time. Anyway, this guy could have taken a Megabus to from Chicago to Cincinnati for $25 and then done a rideshare the rest of the way. It would have been far less expensive.
  - skinnymuch 7y ago
    If making it on time to practice is really important, do you want to depend on a bus? Bus Being late to pick up or leave isn’t uncommon. I assume if something goes wrong along the way you should be able to get off with your stuff without too much trouble and order a ride. But if there’s a big traffic jam. And you might be able to save some time taking inside roads or what have you. A bus isn’t going to do that. You also won’t be able to order a ride share if you’re on the highway with traffic packed up. I think the situation depends on how important making practice is. Sometimes you’re already on thin ice.
    - jeromegv 7y ago
      Yep. And for someone making millions, the cost of the ride is negligible.
      - 7y ago

kevin_b_er 7y ago

The utter inability to get a one-way rental is quite obnoxious. Also the bit about how he was able to reserve a car, but he wasn't a charter flight. Hertz's utter incompetence on the phone was striking as well from some sort of bizarro catch-22 world.

jandrese 7y ago
That seems like normal this-world Hertz incompetence to me. The best and brightest people do not sign up to stand behind a booth at a car rental agency.
- morganvachon 7y ago
  > The best and brightest people do not sign up to stand behind a booth at a car rental agency. According to the article, the guy behind the counter at Hertz agreed with the author about their insane charter flight policy, and tried to help him fix the situation, but was powerless. The red tape was all above his head and much of the confusion/frustration was on the phone with customer support.
  - adamson 7y ago
    If anything, the "best and brightest" folks in Hertz management who drafted the policies that both the phone assistant and the person behind the counter had to try to navigate (and who both acknowledged the policies they were struggling against were dumb) are the ones who failed big time here, not the every men that GP is insulting.
    - brianpgordon 7y ago
      To be clear though, I doubt that someone in Hertz management sat down and devised this scenario deliberately to save a few bucks, hoping that nobody with social media clout would ever run into it. My guess is that it's the result of a web of misaligned incentives and organizational cruft that resulted in a creaky but mostly-working system that nobody ever fixed. You can use your imagination to fill in the details for fun - maybe 8 years ago some stressed-out shift manager without enough people to work the rental desk (due to a freak corporate-mandated hiring freeze) got a call asking for updated contact information for his location and he hesitated a moment and the caller, a temp on loan for the day, helpfully suggested that they just leave the extension blank for now, and marked the location done. And over the next 8 years the company was making its numbers and there was no need to rock the boat and dump a bunch of money into management consultants to tear everything up and start over fresh, and the VP of airports just had a grandkid and was letting his lieutenants run things on autopilot, and the CEO was happy as a clam with his 2pm golf games and expensed steak dinners and had no idea that anything was wrong, etc etc etc etc. The WSJ exposé following Hertz's surprise Chapter 11 filing practically writes itself.

ryanmercer 7y ago

I: - Wish I drove for Lyft - Lived in Chicago - Had gotten him as a passenger After 10-15 miles I would have said "So Mr. Scalzi, I'm going to need you to tell me what the Perry family is up to. Go ahead, I'll give you a few minutes to contemplate, but then you'd better get to telling me" then I'd have also inquired about the next in the Collapsing Empire series. Joking aside, I'm curious to see more from the driver. What did you think when you accepted the fare curbside aside from "I like long trips"? Did you stay at the destination for a night or immediately drive back? If you have a partner were they a bit upset? What's it like driving a stranger for 5 hours?

ssully 7y ago
Sounds like a modern telling of Misery
jandrese 7y ago
Does Lyft compensate you for the drive back to your home? I'm guessing not? Or do they seriously jack up the price if you go beyond a certain distance to compensate the drive for his almost certainly empty drive back?
- lnanek2 7y ago
  You can tell the app where you want to end up after doing a bunch of trips, so the driver could just set his overall endpoint back to O'Hare and Lyft would try to give him rides going that way.

ilamont 7y ago

I followed this as it unfolded on his Twitter account (https://twitter.com/scalzi https://twitter.com/scalzi). He has a way of taking some small experience or observation and turning it into a great little story or one-liner. He's written some good sci-fi, too. Worth following.

lancesells 7y ago
Only after reading this article and then looking at his bio did I put together that this is the author of the Old Man's War series. I think I made it to the 4th or 5th book in the series and it's an enjoyable read
Zanni 7y ago
Also worth checking out: the comment from "toyko uber story" on an insane Black Car Uber ride in Japan (scroll down, it's currently 6th from the bottom).
- uxamanda 7y ago
  Agreed! That story was an unexpectedly hilarious find in the comments. Direct link to that comment: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/07/23/my-300-mile-lyft-ride-from-chicago-to-bradford/#comment-865720 https://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/07/23/my-300-mile-lyft-ride...

bryanlarsen 7y ago

Since the driver would have had to dead head back to Chicago, if his expenses were a not unreasonable 0.50 cents per mile, the only profit the driver made was the tip.

refurb 7y ago
From talking to Lyft drivers, you can specify where your last ride takes you. I’ve heard of people doing that from Sacremento to SF and back. Now can you do that from Dayton to Chicago? I’d be interested to know. You could potentially piece a trip back together with a mix of rides and deadheads.
gregkerzhner 7y ago
If the driver drove 600 miles and his car got 25 miles to the gallon, at $3 a gallon his gas expenses would have only been $72. Of course there are other costs (maintenance, depreciation), but those also exists if you are just driving your car around town, and I think Uber / Lift's whole business model is based on the driver not really taking them into account. If the tip was $100, the driver would have walked away with $330 in cash after the drive - which is not bad for a 10 hour workday.
- crooked-v 7y ago
  $0.58 per mile is the standard IRS deduction for business use of a car, meant to fully encompass gas, maintenance, etc., which would suggest a total expected cost of about $348 if you include more than just gas.
  - rustguy 7y ago
    Even worse, that deduction is very conservative. Like, 1990 Ford Escort conservative. AFAIK, the business use deduction is almost always more if you list all your expenses on a percent-business basis compared to taking the $.58/mile.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    It would but it isn't a great suggestion. If you're trying to optimize costs you can beat that by a huge factor. $0.58 per mile is about how much it costs to lease a car at $350/month and pay for gas, which is what you would do in an upper middle class job requiring lots of travel. So if you get a new, fairly nice car every three years and use it exclusively for Lyft, you won't make any money. If you want to make more money than zero, own your car for longer and do some of the maintenance yourself.

logfromblammo 7y ago

An interesting solution, but I probably would have tried a Penske box truck first. I wouldn't entirely trust a U-Haul to make it the full 300 miles without some kind of a mechanical problem, even when the box is empty except for my suitcase and carry-on. Moving truck rentals are better set-up to do one-way trips than the airport car rentals. Also, you won't get the airport surcharge. Might be a little more expensive than a car rental or the Lyft, but I guess you could always fill up the truck with Chicagoland-specific goods, if you wanted.

refurb 7y ago
I never would have thought of this, but it would likely work!
jedberg 7y ago
I see someone else has watched "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles".
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  Or "Home Alone". Kenosha Kickers? Pol-ka, pol-ka...

khrbrt 7y ago

This is why we need a train system with funding parity to the highway and airport systems. There should be trains leaving constantly, at most every 10 minutes, from Chicago to the east, and frequent, semihourly, trains between neighboring cities along the way. Even if the author could rent a car, having to drive 300 miles is astounding waste of time and mental energy.

f5thesystem 7y ago
Ohio had plans to connect Toledo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus, however the Governor at the time turned down the federal money.
- dexterdog 7y ago
  I'm sure it wasn't free. Federal money for stuff like that usually has strings attached.
  - kgermino 7y ago
    That actually was about as close to free as it gets. At least it was for the similar money (same program) that Wisconsin turned down. In Wisconsin’s case it was about $800MM with no local match needed and the catch was committing to running the service for 20 years. Even as someone who wasn’t a big fan of the project I’m still annoyed because we’ve now spent significantly more than 20 years of operating costs for work that would have been paid for if we took the money.
    - dexterdog 7y ago
      What was the cost of running it for 20 years (both reported and then times 3 for realistic forecast)
refurb 7y ago
I can’t imagine a train leaving every 10 minutes could ever be cost effective. There just aren’t that many people who want to do that trip (8 hours?) when you could do it in 2 hours by plane.

Causality1 7y ago

>(which hadn’t, in fact, told him the destination, just that it was more than 30 minutes away) That's disappointing. There are arguments for both sides of whether it should give the exact location but it ought to at least give the rough number of miles and rough travel time.

envy2 7y ago

This is a fun story—but he should've just booked a round-trip rental car, and dropped it off in Dayton anyway. I've done this a bunch of times, and all they'll do is charge you the one-way rate and grumble a bit... Better to ask forgiveness than permission.

tyrust 7y ago
I'd rather not risk being charged for whatever loss of use number they come up with as well.
- envy2 7y ago
  At least for Hertz, they can charge you a grand total of $10 here (if you call them to change it) or otherwise $12/day per their T&C: https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/reservation/reviewmodifycancel/templates/rentalTerms.jsp?KEYWORD=RETURNCHANGE&EOAG=LAX https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/reservation/reviewmodifycance... "This fee of $10 will be applied if you return your car to a different location from that which was scheduled, or if you return more than 12 hours after the date and time previously scheduled, and you notify us of an extension of your rental by the return date and time previously scheduled by calling 1-800-654-4174. If you do not notify us of such a change, the Late Return Fee of $12 per day, (maximum of 5 days) will apply."
  - cldellow 7y ago
    Elsewhere, the contract notes: "Any changes to the reservation may impact the rental charges." Which is what will happen here. They'll charge you this fee, but also adjust the base rental charges to much higher rates that reflect the fleet management burden caused by one-way rentals.
    - envy2 7y ago
      Yes—they'll adjust the rate to the (much higher) one-way price. But there's no crazy "loss of use" fee like the parent comment suggested. In practice, the cost usually turns into around $0.37/mile, plus the daily rate, unless you have a corporate discount.

dhd415 7y ago

I did the same thing recently when a flight home from a weekend trip was diverted due to weather to an airport 150 miles away. All the rental cars were taken, of course. The next flight out was 8-10 hours away, I was dead tired and had important work obligations coming up. I made sure the Lyft driver knew what I was asking. He phoned his wife to tell her he'd be late getting off his usual shift and off we went. It's certainly not something I'd do often, but I'm glad it was an option then. As a related aside, I have a friend who frequently takes Uber/Lyft for trips from the CT suburbs to Boston since it often beats flying and the Acela train on both cost and time, especially if he's traveling with family members.

payne92 7y ago

The other hack is to “pony express” in stages: use Lyft/Uber to get part way or to a mid point, where you are confident you CAN get a rental, a train/bus, or another Lyft/Uber to keep going. This is especially useful if you can’t find a driver that will take you all the way.

icebraining 7y ago
That's a regular day for us non-car-owners. Nowadays you can even get combined routes with software like Citymapper and Rome2Rio.
koolba 7y ago
I got in short but very loud argument with an airport taxi driver when I did this to get dropped off just outside the airport taxi zone. The “real” ride was 5x the price at the airport taxi rate vs taking an Uber. The louder the driver got, the more I realized how good of decision it was to get the hell out of his car.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- em-bee 7y ago
  in my experience airport taxi drivers all hate short trips. we used to live near an airport, and taking a taxi home was always a nerve-racking moment in how the driver would take it. usually they were grumpy which made for a frustrating experience.
  - alexhutcheson 7y ago
    Often the taxi driver has waited for a long time (sometimes hours) in the airport queue for it to be their turn to get a fare. If you take a $5 ride they’re upset because they invested all that time for no payoff. I don’t think it’s wrong for the passenger to do this, but I understand why it’s frustrating for the driver.

bsder 7y ago

I have had far too many of these stories with Hertz. I simply will not use them anymore. Avis still seems to do right by me, and Avis seems to give their minions enough autonomy to actually fix the customer's problem. My biggest problem with car rental lately is simply that the cars absolutely suck. No backup cameras, no radars, no adaptive cruise, etc. unless you buy the ultra, turbo premium ones. They are rotating their fleets so slowly now that the cars are becoming way behind the curve. I have a secondary problem in that they are always trying to fob off the SUV onto me despite the fact that I didn't want anything bigger than mid-size.

fieryskiff1 7y ago

A Greyhound bus would have done a Chicago-Dayton in about 8 hours for about $50. I might prefer that bus to driving a rental car. 8 hours of nodding off rather than 5 hours of driving.

simonebrunozzi 7y ago

I would have not paid Lyft directly, but instead I would have negotiated with the driver (edit: yes, after having paid the initial few dollars to summon one).

lanewinfield 7y ago
And with that you most likely lose any sort of protection/insurance Lyft gives you.
- jwr 7y ago
  What protection/insurance?
  - alasdair_ 7y ago
    > What protection/insurance? The protection/insurance that kicks in when you get in an accident or the driver decides after fifty miles that fuck it, they don't want to drive any more.
  - aianus 7y ago
    Uber rides where I live are covered by Uber's commercial insurance policy: https://uber.app.box.com/s/un77qysn3pl8v99i4r14k7jpw9ibm11i https://uber.app.box.com/s/un77qysn3pl8v99i4r14k7jpw9ibm11i
- CamperBob2 7y ago
  Some people just gotta live on the edge, I guess
jumbopapa 7y ago
I've had multiple drivers give me a business card and ask me to call them when I need a ride and not use the app. I've never taken them up on it, but I assume they can offer a lower rate and still take home more money.

nchuhoai 7y ago

Here's a guy doing 2000+ miles on Uber, NC -> CA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR6Wh2Zy9jE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR6Wh2Zy9jE

d_burfoot 7y ago

Pro tip: when you request long rides in a ride-share app, give the driver a heads-up about where you're actually going before s/he arrives, so they have the option to cancel the request. They'll appreciate it, and generally won't cancel anyway.

YeahSureWhyNot 7y ago

the driver probably made around $200 from this ride which is more than how much he would have made working the whole day, except this time he mostly drove on a highway at steady speeds instead of dealing with 30 short distance rides and 30 different people. everybody wins

GlenTheMachine 7y ago

God, yes. The last three times I’ve had international flights, the puddle jumper connecting flights have been so delayed that I missed the connection. It seems like the big flights rarely get delayed, but God help you if you need to fly from, say DC to Philly (145 miles) or Baltimore to New York (250 miles). On my next-to-last trip, it took American 13 HOURS to get me from DC to Montreal (450 miles). And they lost my luggage. Literally, I could have taken the bus faster. It’s gotten so bad that I no longer take the puddle jumper flights. I now book to fly directly out of Dulles or Philly or New York and just drive there, or take Amtrak. It’s both faster and cheaper.

cozzyd 7y ago

He probably should have tried flying to Cincinnati or Columbus... Or taken the bus to Dayton (the blue line would have gotten him straight to the Greyhound station from the airport).

0xfaded 7y ago

My experience is that jet centers like Signature Flight Services (from the article) employ concierge people with superpowers. Once as a private pilot of a 4-seater derping above Colorado I needed to divert to Colorado Springs due to a developing thunderstorm and decided to hanger the airplane to not risk hail damage. Basically you ring an FBO like Signature (in this case Cutter Aviation), book some hangar space, and show up. Same problem though, flights were being cancelled out of Colorado Springs and every hotel and rental car was booked. It took an hour, but concierge arranged for TWO hertz employees to deliver a car from out of town. My rate was $25 with unlimited miles plus a bit extra for the hail damage waiver. I think the hangar was $50 for the night.

saxatrumpet 7y ago

Transportation in north America is more difficult than transportation within Europe for sure. I recently moved to Germany from Canada and have found it is much easier to get between locations with many options and price points available.

lutoma 7y ago

Reminds me of something that happened to a friend of mine once. He was booked on the last train from Cologne to Brussels for the day, but missed his connection due to a delay on an earlier train. Due to EU passenger rights regulations, train company was on the hook to get him there somehow, so they ended up paying a taxi to drive him across the Netherlands into Belgium.