Q. Later this summer my boyfriend and I are flying
out to the Aegean. Our hostess emailed to say we can get a lift from the airport with another couple who are coming for the same week on the same flight and who have already booked a hire car. She says she only needs one extra car to transport everyone around during the week and so we should not hire another for ourselves as this would be un-eco. We only barely know the other couple but we do know they will have booked the most expensive car available. What is the etiquette? Should we offer to pay half the cost of the week’s hire since we will be getting lifts in it all week? My boyfriend says we should not pay half because he will not be a named driver and the driver should pay the lion’s share of a hired car. I think the driver should pay less — because he has to do the driving. Whatever the answer is, it is a problem for us because we are broke. We would have hired the cheapest available car for ourselves.
Name and address withheld A. It would be undignified to quibble over this. Instead, why not pretend to have got the wrong end of the stick? Email the couple to say you have booked a Fiat Punto — or whatever the cheapest available car is from that airport — and grandly offer that they be your guests and have lifts with you all week because your hostess is keen that you should be eco-friendly and only have one car. They will email back, Princess-and-the-Pea-style, to say that they too have already booked a car so why not cancel yours since theirs will be more comfortable? Your having set the precedent of not charging will mean they should not expect to charge you. But establish this as a certainty by emailing that you INSIST on filling up when the car runs out of petrol. This is unlikely to happen more than once within a week.
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