Saturday, October 08, 2005

Update on Hertz debacle

This is an update on the debacle in which Hertz car rental is coming after me for 135 pounds for a parking ticket issued about 600 miles from where I was actually parked.

I was told yesterday by the main customer services office to phone the Aberdeen office to get the records on the car rental.

But when I phoned this morning, Carrie at Aberdeen told me to phone the head office as they were too busy to look up my records.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My ignorance is showing.

Would you or the ViL please explain the difference between a pound, a quid, a pence, and all the other random words I recognize as monetary units but don't understand.

Vol Abroad said...

Yeah, sure:

A pound is the basic unit of currency - like the dollar. Currently it's worth about 1.8 US dollars (don't quote me on that, it's been a while since I checked for sure - so that %$@*& parking ticket is like $240 bucks)

Quid is the common slang for pound, its direct equivalent is "buck" for the American dollar.

Pence is basically cents. There are 100 pence in the pound, it's usually appreviated as "p", e.g. that costs 49 p. A one pence piece is also called a penny. Occasionally you'll see tuppence which is a 2 pence piece. Even more rarely, you'll see thrupence, but there aren't any 3p pieces any more.

Shillings and such like haven't been used as legal tender since the early 70s.

Vol-in-Law said...

Actually shilling and half-shilling coins were still in circulation until coin resizing ca 1990, because an old shilling, 12d (12 old pence) = a new 10 pence piece, and old half-shilling 6d = new 5p piece.