How much does it cost to rent a car for 48 € (excl. fuel)?

Not to long ago we all knew that we have to watch out when we compared prices on flights to avoid paying 1 € for the flight and 200 € for the taxes and other surcharges. Thanks to massive critics the airlines have changed this somewhat and now we can normally compare the actual cost of flights.

Today I found out that the car rental companies have adopted this practice instead.

First a short background, I needed a car for the day down in Amsterdam and checked a few different sites to see if I could get a reasonable deal. I finally went with Rentalcars.com since they had the best deal on a reasonable car and since the rental was with Hertz with I used many times and usually been quite pleased with.

I prepaid the booking for 48 € and was quite happy since it clearly stated that "Local taxes" was included, no strange surcharges to worry about I thought and was happy to get away with the ridiculously expensive location charge of 55€.

When I picked up the car the lady at Hertz informed me that I had fooled myself and that I indeed had to pay the additional 55€, irritated by the fact that my rental had more than doubled in price already I asked her that there wouldn't be any other additional charges if I returned the car ful since the preliminary surcharges included refueling and came to a total of 160 €.

After a days driving around the Netherlands I returned the car this evening only to find out that there was an additional 21% tax on the location charge plus some other bullshit surcharge of 2 € (still don't know what that one is for). So my 48 € car rental ended up being a 117 € car rental, and I who thought that the fuel was the only extra cost of the rental...

I have registered a complaint with both Rentalcars.com and Hertz for misleading information and will update this if any of them replies and want their companies not be like some airlines have been in the past.
____
Fick svar från Hertz efter ett tag, men har än idag inte fått nått svar från Rentalcars.com (2014-02-18)

Hej

Tack för ditt mejl, du har bokat din hyrbil via Traveljigsaw och ska då kontakta deras kundtjänst med alla ärenden som rör din hyra. De ansvarar för att bistå sin kund med alla ärenden före under och efter din hyra och kontaktar i sin tur den biluthyrare i det aktuella landet som levererat bilen till dig.

Med vänliga hälsningar
Beatrice
Customer Relations Sweden

Hertz First Rent A Car | International Franchisee
Box 14, Skogsgatan 5, 933 21  Arvidsjaur, Sweden
Phone: +46 (0)960- 473 30 | Fax: +46 (0)960- 108 01

Email: customerrelations@hertz.se | www.hertz.se | www.hertz.se/omhertz

10 reasons why I support the Ubuntu Edge and you should to

Thanks to all the support and interest in the Ubuntu Edge, they have been able to negotiate the price of the components and have just reduced the price of the phone to only $695, there haven't been a better time than now to support this project!

1. Support a new movement and prove that crowd funding can compete against big companies.
2. Be among the first to get your hands on a real super phone. The spec of the phone can still improve, but is already impressive and who knows maybe it will be more powerful than the MacBook Air in the end.
3. Designed to be used with one hand, this is the reason it's 4.5" instead of 5", the perfect size will differ between people but I like the fact that they prioritize the usage of the device rather than the spec on paper.
4. A phone with specs which has a purpose: 300dpi is as good as normal printed paper, no need to go beyond than, instead they are promising to select the screen with the best picture quality and brightness.
5. A camera that can be used, instead of getting the highest megapixels they will provide a camera which can take good photos even in low light.
6. Scratch free crystal glass, it's currently to expensive for mass production but Cronical likes to push the envelope and give us the best possible glass which doesn't get scratched.
7. Best battery, using new battery technology which is believed to increase the capasity with up to 40%, this could result in a phone which actually last more than one day without charging.
8. If we don't like the phone Mark Shuttleworth offer us to return the phone within 28 days for a full refund (shipping excluded).
9. I was among the first to buy the iPhone and the Android G1, both devices which I could have sold at a great profit when I got my hands on them. I'm sure that the demand for this phone will be equally great when it arrives especially since you have to be a backer to get your hands on it. With a bit of luck my second phone might pay the bill for the first one, getting a super phone for free sounds like a good deal to me.
10. If the phone sucks and I can't sell the second phone I can always return them both for a refund and will end up spending about 50 euro (including shipment, missed intrest etc) and if the project doesn't hit the target I won't have spent a dime to support support this great project with a great vision, sounds like a low risk deal to me.

Together we can enable the Ubuntu edge to evolve and we can finally together assist in deciding how future super phones should look.

Go on to the campaign site at Indiegogo and back the project yourself before it's to late.  

Software "update" ?

What is it with Apple these days?

They release a new version of OS X and all of us in the office who had been required to update to Lion thought - "It can't be any worse can it?".

Here are the good news:

* It isn't any worse than Lion...

The bad news is however:

* It's not really any better than Lion either.
* The features which was highlighted and we thought would be nice to get either didn't work as we hoped or required a brand new Mac to work, we are currently having 1-2 year old MacBooks in the office which I would call far from obsolete.
* It cost all of us big parts of a day to update the computer and ensure that all the applications would still run after the update.

Feature updates which wasn't much of an update in the end...

AirPlay

Required a brand new MacBook to work, we could however use it to stream music from any app but for the video to work Apple requires the latest generation of MacBooks.

Full screen mode

In Lion one big draw back was that the full screen mode wasn't of much use when you use multiple screens, in Snow Lion they had enabled the full screen application to be on any screen - Great we thought we can use that feature on one of the screen while maintaining a work bench on the other - Nope, full screen applications are full desktop screens and fill all screens, however the screens which a the active one are just displaying a desktop background. Great feature right....

VMWare

I been running VMware fusion for some time to run Linux and occasional Windows application, after the update it wouldn't start and VMware have the currency to now inform their customers that version 3  (version 4 is their latest version) will not be made to support Snow Lion.

So what has this update given us so far?

* The understanding that Apple isn't trying to maximize the user experience for their customers but rather forcing them into buying newer product at an ever higher rate (did I mention the iOS updates which does even less if you don't have the last generation device).

* One day of taking care of paper work and other tasks while waiting for all required software on our computers to start working as expected again.


Thanks for the cold software, and thanks for not making it worse than Lion.

Madonna MDNA Tour in Gothenburg

• Opening act 1/10 - Started over an hour late and after the show it was more than another hour before the actual show started
• Visual Effects 10/10 - Can't think of anything that could have done it better...
• Dancing 8/10 - It's Madonna after all, can't be anything but great.
• Sound 3/10 - Important to not misstake this for the music, the music was fine but the sound technician was doing a lousy job with the discant  breaking through repeatly making it almost unbearably to listen to at times.
• Show 8/10 - Got pace any no breaks from start to finished with a feeling of a red thread going through the whole performance

Total points

• As a show 7/10, the opening act and the sound takes down the points from a solid nine.
• As a concert 4/10, good music but to many remixes and the failing sound leaves the audience untouched until "Like a prayer" concludes the performance.

Put a move on it...

Just saw this really cool product at Kickstarter and just had to support it.

Have a look below and take the opportunity to also support Motrr and thier Galileo, probably one of the best accessory for your iOS device so far.

LION SUX!!!

After month of staying away from Lion Apple finally found a way to force all of us to update to this shit!

If it wouldn't been for X-code and the new iOS release I wouldn't have had to do this update and could happily been waiting for the next version.

Lion is iOS for Mac and here are just two example why this was a bad idea!

1 - Scroll view in the wrong direction by default (easy to change but still idiotic!)
A desktop is not a touchscreen, so the scroll shouldn't be the same way!

2 - Full screen mode which leaves my second screen unusable! I can't even leave a document open on that screen.
THIS IS NOT AN IPAD!!!


Now I just hope that Mountain Lion or whatever the next version will be won't be such a huge let down.



Apple if you are reading this:

Please don't force your developers to upgrade when you know the newest version isn't an improvement over the last one!

EagleUp released in a new more user friendly version

I'm happy to announce that Jerome have just released version 4 of EagleUp

If you work with Eagle and like to visualize your design in 3D this is the project you been looking for, EagleUp is with this version providing a simple export from Eagle which can be used to import the design into SketchUp. Please see the official project pages for more details:

http://eagleup.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/new-version-released/
http://code.google.com/p/eagleup