Brandi’s Not So Fun Rental Car Experience

Have you been there? You decide to take a vacation and figure out somewhere in the process that you have to rent a car. You look for all the deals, comb through all the discount codes, pick which credit card you need for the rental, all while making the arrangements to 'get away from it all.'

Things go smoothly, until it happens. You misplace the key to the rental car. How is this possible? Listen, don't judge until you have been there. I was looking all over the place we were staying, I had other people looking too. No key.

I called the rental company's roadside assistance. Their advice? Get the car towed to the nearest Nissan dealer and have them see if they can make a key for it and oh, yeah, pay $250 for it. It was that or have the car towed back to the airport, pay a fee for the rental car company to do all of that for us. Let's not talk about the fee that they would charge me for that. Or they suggested, I just find the key.

I called the rental counter at the airport where I got the car, their advice? Find the key.

We had about 2 days left on our trip so we just kept going back to all of the places we had been, using another friends car. As it was beginning to feel more and more like Groundhogs Day, the movie, the key decided to make its presence known, and miraculously surface, in the same spot four people had already looked for it.

Now this story will also start a debate of should you get the roadside assistance that the rental car company's offer? Should you get the additional insurance? Have you done either and ended up need it?