Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - Hot tar all over my rental car! | Itty Bitty Bit

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

A listener shares her nightmare rental car story... but the real question is: does she have insurance?! Join the Itty Bitty Hitty Committee HERE!Instagram:  @THEHITSBREAKFASTFacebook: The Hits Breakfast with Jono, Ben & MeganSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rentals are going wrong when you rented a car or a house or back of the day, a DVD, whatever, when it went so shockingly wrong. Yeah, 0-800-the-hits telephone number 4487 on the text because we've got my friend Tiff on the show. Happy New Year, Tiff. Happy New Year, we're halfway through the year. I know, we're trying to see how long we can keep it going for. So it throws people like yourself. Now, Tiff, you message saying you had an absolute nightmare with a rental car, you and your friend. Oh, yeah, it was terrible.

So we were headed down to a funeral in New Plymouth, so we flew down, picked up a rental car. We had to drive through to Haurah, is that how you say? Haurah. Yeah, Hawara, yeah. Yep, and we were driving along, okay? My friend's driving, I'm in the passenger seat, and we're going through some country roads,

getting out to right out the wops, and we get into this lane, and we are driving along, and we hit some roadworks, okay? So we get to the roadworks, and she gets all flustered. It's already been like, you know, a bit of a traumatic time. Anyway, she's like, what do I do? What do I do? We can see this truck is a head with obviously laying like just fresh tassial, okay?

Fresh, like, part is going down. Okay? And she's like, what do I do? And the guy holding the stop sign comes over and he's like, oh, you need to stay on the right side of the road. Okay. So she's like, oh, okay, okay, just the right side. He's like, yeah, stay on the right side of the road. So then she just starts driving.

And I can see, I'm like, what do you? doing, she's just driving straight ahead into the path of this truck and there's wet tar just going all over the car, okay? It's going everywhere. So the truck spraying tar all over the rental vehicle? Yeah, all over the rental vehicle and we're just driving

straight ahead and I'm screaming at her I can see the guys are all like panicking, running for us. Anyway, I'm like, get up the road! She swerves onto the correct side of the road and I was just like to her, oh my gosh, she stops cars like, what are you doing? They're all running over to us and she was like, he said, stay on the right side of the road and I was like yeah the right side go over to the right

side of the road and she was like I thought he meant the correct side oh I can see how she got there in that moment going oh well I'm driving on the right side being the correct side yeah but also the truck that's vomiting out of town yeah could be a good deterrent yeah could be and the man that had stopped us anyway the car I she was like can you get out can you get out by then the road we were surrounded us and I got out of the car, this white car. And she was like, how was it? I was just like, it looks like a Dalmatian. It's okay. Yeah.

It's okay. It was black. Because we'd swerved onto the outside of it or gravel, everything would just be stuck on it. Oh, no. So what's the deal with the rental car? When you bring that back, you're like, oh, no, all good. What I'd do is I'd do it after hours, you know, you can drop the key off and to go, yeah. Luckily, it was for her, I left her to deal with that.

I'm that kind of friend. I'd fly out before her, so she, I'm doubt with it. There must have been a write-off, surely. Yeah, it was a write-off, I'm pretty sure. And I think we had to pay extra or something. I can't really remember. Oh, geez. I still probably focused on the trauma of that moment.

So that's what we want to get on to. Rentals gone wrong. Can you beat that being showered in Tar seal in the rental car? It's a tough one to beat. Thank you so much, mate. Remember we were in Parmi we were filming something, like a TV show at the time, and we got picked up by one of the team, the production team, and they were in a rental car, and they didn't quite judge how close.

The wall. Yeah, and you could hear along the drivers and passenger door at the back. Yeah, and we didn't get out in check. We're like, I'm sure it'll be right. You were like, I'm sure to be fine. I was sure to be fine, because this person's obviously embarrassed, they're feeling a bit bad. You're like, I'm sure it'll be fine.

Well, there was the first time we'd met them too. So I was probably in the mode of just making them feel better. It'll pop out. You're like, it'll pop out and it'll be fine. So we just got to the location. This is without looking at it. They dropped us off. We walked down to the car.

We turned back and we're like, it's definitely not going to pop out. Like half the car was all just like crunched and scratched. It was a big job. Yeah. Yeah, that's not going to pop up. But at least they hadn't seen it at that point. So they did feel not too bad about it. No.

I didn't notice. Didn't notice. Yeah, no, we noticed. Bronwyn, welcome. Happy New Year. Hi, and happy New Year to you. Good to have you on, mate. Rental's gone wrong. What happened to you, Brony? Okay, so we went to the car, all good. That was fine. And then we were going to meet up with some friends, and we went in. We had a couple of drinks.

And next thing, there was a knock on the door, and it was this very disgruntled neighbor coming and said, do you have a white car? I'm thinking, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's our rental. He said, well, it's kind of landed up in a tree. And we're like, oh, yeah, no, don't be silly. and then we went outside and turns Bob this car had rolled down the slight slope because of course I forgot

to put the handbrake on and it had rolled down the slight slope and it landed up in like one of these low kind of shrub bushes

this is back in South Africa and it had just landed up on this tree and it was sitting on top of a tree it was like yeah like a sort of like a shrub bush

kind of that is pretty impressive and so what like okay So first thoughts in your head then? I was like, oh, MD, what have I done? I was like, oh, my God, his neighbor was, like, not impressed. And does the rental car company come and get a,

was it a tow truck or is a crane? How do you sort that problem out? I had to get two tow trucks to come and get it out because the first one came and then it wasn't thinking of or something, and then they had to come and get another one, which was stronger to get it off the tree. That's a sham. And you're like, oh, no.

When the second one arrives, you're like just end it now, end it now. Any sentence it begins with your cars up in a tree. You're like, what? What? Did I not put the handbrae going? Oh, no. Oh, my gosh. It was, yeah, I've never done that again, to be fair.

Thank you for sharing, Bron. That's a great call. I was just remembering a guy I knew. He took his family away and was sort of in a resort thing, but it was an apartment situation, and he was looking after his little sort of three-year-old, went into the bathroom momentarily, came out. The three-year-old was pushing through the railing of the balcony.

Oh, oh. It was throwing like magazines over, ashtrays. And then when he came out, the phone cord was like dead. The phone was dangling over. You know, the one attached to the cord. And he looked over. And it was a pool area. So all the patrons are just being rained upon with items from the hotel room.

Very dangerous.