National Car Rental

No matter how much they hurt me, like a self-esteem sapped and battered lover, I keep going back for more pain. You see, over the years our dear friends at National and yours truly have had a couple of difference of opinion. I said the petrol tank was full, they didn't. I said that I had filled up at Old Street, they told me they managed to get more than another tenner's worth of petrol in.

The problem is that it's ludicrously local to me and with a brief perusal online, easy to get competitive deals. Hence my transparent threats to take my business elsewhere don't generally have the place petrified with panic. Particularly, as said business generally hovers around the £200 per annum mark and so I'm not usually in the frame for customer of the year.

So what do I do? I skulk back there and try and focus on their attributes rather than their failings (a policy that appears to has served my dear wife well with me). They have an excellent selection of vehicles, all nice and clean and in fit roadworthy condition and the best bet, in my experience, is to find a good deal online and use this as the pick-up location rather than point of purchase - be warned that on Saturday mornings you can sometimes expect to wait for thirty minutes or so to get dealt with.

Often at the weekends, they do reasonably priced upgrades and will sell you a brimming tank of fuel that undercuts the local petrol pump charges and eliminates the possibility later on of any time-consuming, ego driven standoffs.