ALWAYSON CONFERENCE... AO2004: THE INNOTIVATION SUMMIT!
Do Not Use Payless Rent-A-Car... Straight Out Joke

I'm in San Francisco this week for the AlwaysOn conference. Great line up of speakers, such as Susan Ayers-Walker (Chairman, MIT/Stanford Venture Lab), Michael Powell (Chairman, FCC), Steve Jurvetson (Managing Partner, Draper Fisher Jurvetson), Professor Larry Lessig (Stanford Law School), and Joe Trippi (Founder, Change for America and Howard Dean's former campaign manager). Starts tonight so I'll post something up on the conference later tonight.

Side story... I typically use Budget, National, or Enterprise when I travel and rent a car. This time I used Expedia to look for a rent-a-car and I came across a deal with Payless. I was thinking they were all pretty similar, so I might as well take the cheapest price. When I arrive at the Payless office at SFO, it looked like trailer converted into an office. The printer they used was at least 15 years old. The kind you roll in the paper as if it was a typewriter. The "Payless" sign on the wall was cracked and faded, and I began to wonder if the company was going bankrupt soon or if this was a franchised location that was losing money.

The surreal scene that could have been in National Lampoon's Vacation continued when they pulled up my Ford Escort. It was dented and scraped, and looked out a car they pulled out of a junky used car lot. The attendent actually had to go over the car with me to pre-check it and see if I could add to the mess that was before me. Two scratches side rear panel, front bumper with white paint scraped, some sappy substance on the roof,... I was tired and just wanted to go to my hotel room. Payless? Never again.