SEATTLE, WA – Susan Johnston of Tucson, AZ took her elite rental car benefits to new heights this past weekend when she decided to take an employee’s Tesla Model 3 for an extended test drive.
National Rent-a-Car is known nationwide for its very generous rental policy for their most loyal members. The “Emerald Club Aisle” service, also known as the “Choose Any Car” benefit, means that if you see a car in the Emerald Aisle, as long as you’ve booked the midsize or above, you can choose the car that most suits you and leave with it.
Timothy Saunders was visiting his coworkers on his day off at the SEA Airport location and decided to park his 2021 Tesla Model 3 to show off all the fun benefits. According to Timothy, he had just started to show off the fun new “farting seat” feature to his coworkers when he actually got the need to go to the bathroom.
It was in those few short minutes that Johnson headed to the lot and saw the candy apple red car waiting for her.
How did she actually leave the lot, you ask? Well, Timothy was nice enough to show his car off to the gate attendant as well, so when she saw it coming, she lowered the gate. When asked afterwards why she didn’t ask for ID, the unnamed gate attendant said “This is National Rent a Car, not Hertz. We obviously don’t have and Tesla cars, so I knew this had to be Tim’s new ride. I guess I probably should have asked for and ID…”
The Tesla key is linked to a user’s cell phone and there is also a credit card-sized physical key. Since Saunders took his cell phone with him but forget his actual car key, driving the car off was easy.
Finding the car was also a simple task thanks to the Tesla location feature in the app itself. Timothy was able to see exactly where his car was and took a Nissan Rogue from the lot in order to meet the accidental car thief at her Courtyard Marriott Tukwila SeaTac Airport location.
No charges have been filed, and Ms. Johnston was quite relieved. “I realized that I had no idea where to fill up the gas tank on the Tesla, so it was probably a good thing that I have this wonderful 2019 Nissan Rogue to drive around.”
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