The Clutch Failure Chronicles: A Dublin Road Trip Story with Dan

Ever thought you could be stranded in a foreign country due to an unexpected car breakdown? Buckle up as I, Dan the Road Trip Guy, walk you through my unusual encounter at Alamo in Dublin, Ireland. As your host for this exciting journey, I'll give you an account of our rental car’s clutch failure and the ensuing fiasco with the rental agency, and how we managed to salvage our vacation time.

In this dramatic episode, I also bring you the heartwarming side of this story - the unexpected kindness of our Airbnb host and her father who went out of their way to help us. Listen in as I still wrestle with the car rental agency to settle the issue, proving once again that every road trip adventure comes with its own set of unexpected twists and turns. Also, I'm eager to hear your own accounts of frustrating car rental experiences for a future podcast episode. So, get ready for a road trip tale unlike any other!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Absolutely nothing beats windshield time, a road trip and good conversation in the car. Welcome to another episode of Dan the Road Trip Guy, where we have entertaining conversations about cars and road trips, life lessons and maybe, every now and then, a little advice. I'm your host, dan Neal Road Trip Extraordinaire. And now buckle up and enjoy the show. So I recently had an experience renting a car at Alamo in Dublin Ireland. A young man at the desk said can you drive a manual transmission? I wanted to go. Well, duh, yes, but I didn't. I said yes, that's not a problem. So I'm going to hold on to that and we'll come back to the Ireland story in a moment.

Speaker 1: 0:51

A little background on me. I was probably about 12, maybe 13 years old. I worked at the family grocery store. If you've listened to this podcast, you've heard me talk about the family grocery store One of my jobs. I don't think it was a job, but I would pull the workers' cars around. At the end of the day, around seven, I would pull these cars from the side lot to the front. Now, not a huge drive, for sure, but the majority of these cars had a manual transmission. So my experience with manual transmissions started very young in life. My first car at 16 was a manual transmission, three on the floor. Mine and Linda's first car out of college was a Honda Civic station wagon with a manual transmission. Our next four Hondas would have manual transmissions. I would have various BMWs over the years with manual transmissions. I had a Volkswagen with a manual transmission. One of the BMWs I literally drove cross-country from San Jose, california, back to Cincinnati. So yes, I'm pretty confident I can drive a manual transmission.

Speaker 1: 2:03

Back to the Ireland story. I went to Ireland in September with our good friends in Malones. We flew in on a Friday morning, we had booked our plane tickets. You know, months before we had found Airbnbs to stay at on a hotel or two, we had looked for places to eat, attractions to see and we had a lot of fun. And oh, we rented a car from Alamo. We land, we get through customs, we get our bags, we make our way to the car rental counter. It was an easy experience at the counter. We got our car. Took a little bit to find it in the parking lot, but that's okay, they helped us out. We found that it was a Pugio manual transmission, right hand drive. Remember we're not early, not a big deal to me gonna drive on the left hand side of the road.

Speaker 1: 2:57

We are traveling from Dublin to Colarney, if you know anything about that. It's a pretty open road. It's sort of like a divided highway here or an interstate. 120 kilometers or so is the speed limit. We just made our way there and I think it took maybe four, four hours or so. We had lunch.

Speaker 1: 3:17

We get into Colarney and we're like, well, we should swing by the grocery store. So we do that and we're about two kilometers for our Airbnb. It's kind of late in the day now. It's still daylight. I push the clutch in downshift clutch won't pedal, doesn't come up. I'm like, oh okay, well, this could be a problem, pull it up with my toe and we limp to our Airbnb.

Speaker 1: 3:41

We get inside the Airbnb, we get a little bit settled and then I call for roadside assistance. I must say in probably 40 years I've been renting cars I've never used roadside assistance. I've never had a mechanical breakdown in a rental car. But I call. They're very pleasant. They're like, yeah, yep, we can take care of it. We do it tomorrow In the morning.

Speaker 1: 4:03

Call Alamo, they'll get you another car. We'll get this all situated Great. Call Alamo the next morning. Oh yeah, sorry about that. Yeah, we can get you a car. Just call roadside assistance while we're finding a car for you. Get them to pick up the car, all is good, great, call roadside assistance back. They're going to come and get the car, not a problem. Call Alamo back.

Speaker 1: 4:30

Well, we don't have a car in Kalarney, but we have one in Limerick. So I very quickly look at my phone, calculate the distance to Limerick and that's a couple hours. I said, well, that's two hours away. You have a suggestion on how I'm going to get this car. Well, you could take a taxi or you could take the train. I'm like well, no, I rented a car from you. You give me a car here. Well, they clearly weren't going to do that. And they also proceed to tell me I'm going to have to pay 2,500 euros as a deductible on the clutch and they'll refund if there's a difference or charge me more. I'm like no, no, no, no, no. This is not my fault. I drove on an open road. I know how to drive a manual transmission. Well, you burnt the clutch up. This happens to the Americans who come here. Well, no, I don't think so. Before I could say no or anything. I get a ding on my phone that they've charged my card and I'm like no, hang on. And they're like nope, that's the way it works. I'm like okay. So I decide this is my vacation, I'm not going to get all worked up about this. So I hang up.

Speaker 1: 5:46

I call our Airbnb host. I ask her do you know anyone who had? I explain to her what's happened. Do you know anyone with a taxi service? She's like sure, my dad is a retired dairy farmer and he has a taxi. I'm like great, can he pick us up and we at least enjoy our day, our first day in Ireland, really? She's like sure. So she contacts him and he comes to the house to pick us up.

Speaker 1: 6:18

Mr O'Sullivan is his name. He wants to know the story, so we give him the story. And he wants to call Alamo. So we're like sure, and so he calls Alamo. And he was. He was quite upset with them, the way they were treating us, but clearly they were not going to help. They put him on hold, he put it on the speaker, they put him on what now appears to have been indefinite music hold, and I just look at him and say, mr O'Sullivan, we just want to go enjoy our day. So we'll deal with this when we get back and he's like, fine, but he did say, hey, my daughter knows someone that works at another car rental agency. How about she works on this? And my first thought is, why are these people so helpful with our car rental when it's not even their problem? And I think what I learned through our travels through Ireland they are some of the nicest people that I've encountered and they just want to help you however they can. So I'm like, yeah, that'd be great. I think during lunch he dropped us off, told us where to have lunch, things to see places, shop everything During lunch. I'm pretty sure she called me two or three times. So let me know she's working on this.

Speaker 1: 7:29

We end up long shore. That story is. We end up Sunday morning. Mr O'Sullivan takes us to the Kalarney airport, drops us off, we pick up a car from Hertz. We got in the car. We spent our week in that car. I am still battling with Alamo trying to get this resolved. I send messages, I make phone calls. I get nothing back. If you've ever had a bad experience at a car rental agency, I would love to hear from you and we'll do a little podcast episode of bad car rental experiences. So you can find me at DanTheRoadTripGuidecom. Just fill out the contact form and I'll get back to you. Until we meet up again, you can find me on the internet at DanTheRoadTripGuidecom. I hope you will follow this podcast so that you don't miss any upcoming episodes and share it with your family and friends so they can enjoy the stories of my guests also. Until we meet again on a future episode, keep having conversations with each other and keep driving.