Valet Parking at the Scottsdale Conference Center and Resort

This is Cath's new Prius, courtesy of a valet at the Scottsdale Conference Center and Resort. That occurred on the night of January 17. Today is February 9, and she still doesn't have her car back. Not that the folks at the Scottsdale Conference Center and Resort give a damn.

Ask me how helpful management has been. Short answer? AWOL.

The valet at the Scottsdale Conference Center and Resort slammed one of Catherine's co-worker's car into hers, causing damage so severe that they estimated it will take 100 MAN HOURS to fix, The hatch is bent, the deck is bent, the side is dented, and then there's the corner you see that's torn off.

That has already taken 3 weeks. We're still counting.

And it will cost $8,00- to $9,000 to repair.

Not counting the depreciated value of a car involved in an accident.

Say what? Did you know that a car involved in an accident is automatically worth less, even fully repaired, than the same car never involved in an accident? It's true. And it's trackable by the VIN number assigned to every car. Your accident details can be discovered downstream for the rest of your car's life.

AND: Did you know you can claim for that depreciated value? I didn't either, until a couple of weeks ago. This is the kind of thing you find out if you're a white-collar person who works with people who talk about taking care of business. People who know how to deal with the system. It's the kind of thing a woman without access to that world, or a minority person without access to that world, will never, ever hear.

Needless to say, we're not thrilled with the Scottsdale Conference Center and Resort. Paying to make us whole, as they say, doesn't deal with the inconvenience, the hassle of having to bird-dog the repair and insurance angles, and the unbelievable pain in the tush that a wrecked car constitutes. At the very least they should give us a two-day spa package, with meals and a very nice room.

But I'm not holding my breath.

Prius: More Than Just a Car!

For the survival-inclined, from the Harvard Press:

“Around the corner at Madigan Lane, John Sweeney, a member of the town’s conservation-minded Heat Advisory Committee, took a characteristically green approach to powering his home during the [ice] storm. He reported his achievement in an e-mail, saying it was no big deal, but that his wife thought it an impressive tale worth sharing: Sweeney ran his refrigerator, freezer, TV, woodstove fan, and several lights through his Prius, for three days, on roughly five gallons of gas.

“’When it looked like we were going to be without power for awhile, I dug out an inverter (which takes 12v DC and creates 120v AC from it) and wired it into our Prius…These inverters are available for about $100 many places online,’” he wrote.

“The device allowed the engine to run every half hour, automatically charging the car battery and indirectly supplying the required power.”

Nice, huh? From what I can tell, there are several kinds of power inverters. Best check with someone knowledgeable--for instance, an RV outfitter accustomed to recommending power inverters to run appliances from a vehicle battery--to see what kind will work best for your needs. [Note: I'm not specifically endorsing the roadtrip america site. I list it here only as one of many possible sources for background information only. Use it or any other information source at your own risk.]