6441

Awesome, my $12 investment now seems much less frivolous! Now to fashion alien-killing weapons from inflight magazines and empty pretzel bags.

6442

Indeed, a friend of mine just discovered that his not-very-old Jeep bought from Enterprise Car Sales needs an entirely new engine to the tune of $5000.

He’s, uh, not very happy.

As for me, all I’ve done recently that’s interesting is buy a house and get tickets for the NHL Winter Classic this New Year’s Day.

6443

I researched the rental car repurchase thing pretty thoroughly (as thoroughly as possible).

  1. A lot of ‘used cars with high miles’ that you buy from dealers are actually ex-rentals (something that only shows up on

  2. car rental companies generally take better care of their cars than a typical car owner. Every vehicle is checked out upon return so damage is noted immediately, they change the oil, etc.

  3. I’m buying a small minivan, not something that your typical “let’s get a rental and beat the shit out of it” type would rent.

  4. The “people rag the shit out of rentals” demographic is really the minority. Most people are way more scared of damaging a rental than they are their own car.

  5. I’m putting mayb 200 miles a month on this thing.

  6. Enterprise does a 7 day, 1000 mile buy back. They also do a 12-month/12K mile limited powertrain warranty. So a “not-very-old Jeep” should be covered unless he wasn’t purchased that recently.

  7. If you get a low mileage one the factory warranty carries over. So if you get a Toyota RAV4 with 15K miles on it that’s a year old, you’re covered a reasonable duration still.

In the end it came down to “Am I more likely to be ripped off buying in another state from a large fleet, a small local dealer, or an individual?” and opted to go for the first in the list as the least likely to be screwed option.

6444

Fleet vehicles, such as rentals, are a safer bet, always. No matter who you’re buying from there’s always a chance you’re getting a lemon, the difference with fleet vehicles is that they have a well document maintenance history you get with the vehicle. If you don’t like something you see you don’t have to buy it.

I’ve had much worse luck buying used cars from private owners and dealerships (who are selling cars they get from auctions and trade ins) than companies selling off their own fleet.

6445
  1. The “people rag the shit out of rentals” demographic is really the minority. Most people are way more scared of damaging a rental than they are their own car.

Depends if the rental company is mostly used by private individuals or corporates I’d think. I know we treated ours pretty much like go-carts especially when we weren’t allowed cars with engines bigger than a 1.2l to save costs so we were doing 2.5kmiles a week up and down motorways at 80mph (to whatever it’d actually do, 90 was a bonus) all the way.

6446

Oh, there’s definitely no such thing as a sure thing (as per someone’s experience with Nissan on here…), so I’m just trying to stack the odds a bit more in my favor. If I buy a car from a private individual and somehow it doesn’t pass muster I may not have many options, and given that I’m buying this vehicle without having even seen it in person*, I’d much rather have someone around to support it than a random guy off Craigslist.

It also doesn’t hurt that if the shit hits the fan one of the head guys here is buddies with one of Enterprise’s VPs.

  • I’ve done this a few times, not really that big a deal.
6447

He bought it a little over a year ago.

You should be careful about the factory warranty carryover – it turned out that in my friend’s case, the factory powertrain warranty only carries over if you explicitly pay a $150 transfer fee in the first 30 days of ownership, which Enterprise did not do and did not tell him about.

His fault for not researching it thoroughly, of course, but it’d have been nice if someone at Enterprise had told him about that.

6448

Wouldn’t work. It’s the act of marking the X that associates the task with the mark. A tattoo wouldn’t have any significance.

A rubber band placed around the wrist works, too. Something out of the ordinary that I’m likely to see.

I don’t have particularly bad memory, but describing this makes me sound like Leonard in Memento.

That is a gorgeous instrument. Makes me wish I could play.

Maybe it’s time I dig out that old Mexican Strat of mine and learn…

6449

Jeez, there’s no need to get personal!

6450

My wife just told me “I have five STDs now.”

It took me a couple seconds before I realized she was talking about her Fable 2 character.

6451
  • got engaged a month or so ago
    .

One question: Who submitted who?

:-) Congrats!

6452

Haven’t had power for two days. Big storm came through. Getting used to blowing out candles on the bedside table before going to bed. Suck it electricity!

6453

The post from 1:15 seems to contradict that! Or was it your evil, fat doppleganger who survives when all the food goes bad? Or are YOU that doppleganger?

6454

Check car prices in Norway.

Make sure you’re sitting down first.

6455

NM - it’s not that interesting. :)

6456

Today I have to pack up and put a lot of my stuff in storage here in Konstanz, Germany, and tomorrow I go back to Sweden for two weeks, before going off to Toronto until May. I’m a bit stressed.

6457

Like that’s stopping the rest of us.

6458

I finally got up on stage and did stand-up for the first time. It pretty much went as well as I could’ve hoped, and the knot that’s been in my stomach for the last month is now gone. So in a way, it’s a miracle cure.

6459

I am applying for a home loan today. I AM COMPLETELY TERRIFIED.

6460

They might have to keep you away from sharp objects when you are actually ready to sign instead of merely applying.