Well we decided to go with Enterprise again even after getting stuck with a junk Jeep Commander for the West coast trip. Mostly this was because they were the only ones I could find with a minivan in either Peoria or Bloomington. We were supposed to pick up a swagger wagon at the Bloomington airport even though their online booking tool said the only minivan was at one of the in-town locations. I made sure to confirm this with them and they assured me it was correct. Lo and behold, when we arrived at the airport to pick it up, no minivan was to be found. Instead they wanted to give us a Ford Excursion as an “upgrade”. We weren’t too excited about the 8-10MPG fuel economy hit given that we were traveling 5,500 miles. After some heated questioning as to how they could screw up the reservation, the guy at the desk called the other Enterprise locations in town and found a minivan. He tried to convince us to let him go pick it up and bring it back so he could still get the sale, but given that you get charged a 9% additional airport tax and we already had Jami’s Rav4 to drive over there we decided to just head to the location in town with the minivan. Once we got to the Enterprise in College Hills shopping center things started looking up. The people working there were extremely friendly and helpful. We thought we were going to get stuck with a $15/day underage driver fee for Jami, but using a discount code I found online they waived the fee, saving us $150. In a heads up play from David he mentioned we should get a Caterpillar employee discount, saving us another 15%, and the 9% from not having to pay airport tax. In the end it couldn’t have worked out much better, and we were over $300 ahead on the budget starting out, but an hour behind schedule. We’re driving to Boston now and will get in a little later, but starting tomorrow morning we’ll be back on schedule.
Also, minivans rock. This Chrysler Town & Country has an unbelievable amount of storage and space and has been getting over 25mpg.
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