Page 11 - Panama Review

insurance via the credit card. What she left out was that we could also take out their
mandatory insurance at an additional cost of $25 a day, which was nearly the cost of
the car rental daily rate. So, after watching and listening to my wife and the attendant
fence back and forth, they finally managed to agree to rent the vehicle for one day at
the rate we were quoted through COSTCO and pay the $25 insurance costs. Somehow,
when the contract was printed, the numbers did not add up. We were too tired to
argue any further. Then this happened.
By this time it was nearly midnight. The Attendant said, “Meet me at door number
one, and I will bring your car. By this time, we had all kissed and made up after a very
prickly negotiation. We headed for door number one and she headed in another
direction. Five minutes go by, no attendant. Fifteen minutes go by, no attendant.
Thirty minutes go by, you guessed it, no attendant. However, the original gentleman
who we met when we first got there came through the door, shocked that we were still
there. He immediately began punching numbers on his cell phone. Hopefully, he was
trying to reach his counterpart. While we were waiting, we walked back inside over to
the counter and of course it was empty. Fortunately, we met a young man who spoke
great English and my wife spoke to him about the insurance. He explained as I
mentioned earlier that insurance is needed on all rental vehicles and it can be done via
a $10,00 hold on the credit card or by purchasing the car rental’s insurance. He was
extremely helpful. He gave us information about cell phone and Internet usage that
we could use for free for a couple of hours so that we could at least use our GPS to get
to the hotel. His presence helped to assuage our suspicions that possibly, we were part
of some elaborate hoax to steal our credit card information. For all I know, you can
buy Avis car rental apparel all over Panama. Complete with nametag. Hey, don’t
judge me, I was really tired by this time. I should have been drinking coffee and red
Bull to get through this night.
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