Author: Alan Majka (---.maine.res.rr.com)
Date: 02-25-11 07:18
We just returned one of Jerry's heaps. What he did not tell us until after we rented the old Isuzu Trooper was that there is a gas shortage on the island and the customer must bear the responsibilty. There is currently only one place to buy gas on the island and they run out very soon after getting infrequent deliveries. Since we were renting Wed to Wed, Jerry told us to get in line to buy gas at 7:00 am Sunday morning. We drove the 6 miles into town and waited in line for 2 hours watching buses, people with gas cans and other favored customers cut in front of us before we finally filled the tank. We attempted to top the tank off on Mon, Tues and Wed before returning the heap, but there was no fuel available. When we returned the heap, Jerry was rude and gave us a hard time about not returning it full. We drove less than 50 miles after filling the tank and the needle had dropped to 2/3 of a tank. The thing was running so rich as evidenced by the exhaust, and the idle was set so high to keep it from stalling, it must have been getting under 5 MPG. He told us we would need to pay for days for which he couldn't rent the vehicle after we left "because nobody would want to rent it with less than a full tank, especially since it uses so much gas". When I stated it was unreasonable, his reply was that the police had contacted him two times threatening to fine him because we had been seen with someone riding behind the rear seat. Then he said he had told us to rent two vehicle from him because we had 6 people. We clearly told him we had 6 people months earlier and he never said this would be an issue. In fact, he even said we could tie our bags on the roof rack to make room for everyone. If the police had stopped us and told us this was a problem, we would have stopped doing it. Rather strange the police would go to him instead of us. Jerry appears to be "unstable" and told us he moved to PR to be with the girlfriend of someone he arrested when he was a US marshall, so I didn't want to provoke him when he started getting excited and let it go. We have no idea what he will try to charge our credit card as he would not give us a final receipt. We followed all of his extensive and often bizarre instructions including covering the seats with trash bags so our bathing suits wouldn't rust the old worn seats and this is the thanks we got. We should have rented the new mini van with good fuel economy and better comfort from Carlos; however, Jerry told us "Carlos charges $15/gallon for vehicles returned with less than a full tank". Who knows, that may look like a bargain compared to what we finally get charged. Sorry for the long post, but still left out many of the bizarre details of this business.
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