Trip Gone Wrong...

Well, it started about a week ago. We left to go on vacation to the beach. Every year we go to this beach town in the summer. I guess it's tradition now. Anyway, this town (I'm going to call it BeachTown) is a place where literally everyone drives golf carts. There are different golf cart rental places in BeachTown.
Well, we go to a different rental place pretty much each year because we haven't really found one we like yet. Unfortunately, this year we picked the wrong one.

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I'm not going to be using any actual names in this story for privacy reasons

We had reserved a cart for the vacation so there wouldn't be a chance of all of them being booked. We get to the rental place and they give us a cart. We get in the cart and drive around for a bit. A few minutes later we find out that one of the backseat seatbelts isn't working so we take it back to try to get a new one. Once we get back we explain what's wrong and they get us a new one. But... the new one was messed up too. It was way too slow. We go back again and get another cart. This one had a crack in one of the seats but we didn't want to push our luck for a perfect cart.

This cart worked pretty well for a few days but eventually started to slow down. Not only that but the brakes seemed to be giving out. We only had 3 days of vacation left so we decided to just deal with it.

That night we came back to the hotel late. The hotel we were staying at has a rule where you can't park golf carts in the parking lot past 8:00 but instead could park them in some grass beside the hotel. So we parked the car in the grass and went to sleep. Little did we know something really bad would happen that night.

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This is where we parked | Image from Google Maps

We got up the next morning only to find that our golf cart wasn't where we parked it. We assumed that the rental place had come and gotten it as if they got the pick-up date wrong. So, we called them... They said that they had someone call the police because they found the golf cart IN THE OCEAN. Yes, someone stole our golf cart and drove it in the ocean. We think we know who it was but I will get to that in a minute.

So we went to the hotel service people and asked if they could show us the cameras and of course, they don't have any facing THE PLACE THEY WANT PEOPLE TO PARK.

We called the cops and then told them what happened. They couldn't write it up as a stolen case because the golf cart rental place recovered it and the cops couldn't do anything because it was on private property. However, there was a gas station on the other side of the road. Maybe it would have a camera pointing at the grass strip. Wouldn't that be convenient?

The gas station | Image from Google Maps

Turns out that it was too dark to see anything from that camera. Even with the street lights.

(Also, every golf cart key works with every golf cart. Which is kinda dangerous if you ask me.)

Now, who do we think did it? We think that the golf cart rental got their people to do it. Let me explain.

From the beginning, something seemed odd. When we rented that golf cart the employees seemed to be shocked. We just assumed it was nothing. Next, that golf cart wasn't the only golf cart on the grass we parked it on, however, it was the only one that was from the place we rented from. Finally, when we were parking, we noticed two men pushing another golf cart and when they noticed us they put their heads down. We think those are the people that stole our cart.

The golf cart rental place wanted us to pay 5,000 dollars for the damage. So, we went to the rental place and tried to explain to them that it was stolen. Of course, they knew this since we think they were the people who stole it. We asked where the owner was and they said he was in town. Then, we asked to speak to the owner and they said that he wasn't in town. They couldn't keep the same story. We tried to exchange insurance and they wouldn't even tell us that. They wouldn't talk. After a while of arguing they threatened to call the cops if we didn't leave. Turns out the cops were already there because we parked our car in the street at the rental place. Next thing you know a worker came and parked his car in the same place. No cops came after him.
We came across some people that had rented from there that morning and they said that they saw our golf cart parked in front and overheard an employee saying "Looks like someone just bought them a new cart". This is how the golf cart rental gets new carts.

Luckily we didn't end up having to pay the 5k because our insurance covered it. Still, this was a complete scam and ruined our vacation. Just be careful when renting stuff. Read reviews.

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