I like GPS, I like it a lot. I don’t need it, but I want it. I don’t even know why I want it, really, but I do.
I’m away on business and I rented a car from Enterprise today, in part due to my fond memories of being able to rent cars from them prior to turning 25 (vote/serve in the military at 18, drink at 21, rent cars at 25… makes perfect sense), but mostly because they had a Travelocity special for pretty cheap rentals this week. As I’m in Beaverton, Oregon (a suburb of Portland) and have no idea where anything is here, I figured it would be helpful to have a robotic voice tell me to “turn around when possible” every 48 seconds or so.
When the guy behind the counter said, “Sure, here you go” and passed me a Garmin GPS unit (for a few bucks more per day), I was pretty impressed. I’m used to the Neverlost system from Hertz which makes you select a certain car class in order to have the service. The Garmin unit simply plugs into the lighter and suctions (is that a verb?) onto the windshield. Very simple, very cool.
They aren’t #1, and I don’t really think they try harder, but kudos to Enterprise for a very elegant solution to enabling customers to select GPS as an option. Sure makes the Kia Rio driving experience more palatable!