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Having fun at Disneyland before the flu
Are you familiar with the debate about price-gouging laws? An anti-price-gouging law is one that seeks to prevent people from taking advantage of others during an emergency. For example, in the aftermath of a disaster, should a business be able to triple, quadruple or octuple the price of water, ice, or batteries? If people need water badly enough, they will pay almost anything for it. It makes us angry to see someone callously profiting from someone else’s distress. It just seems deeply, deeply wrong. That is why these laws exist. Economists tell us, however, that these laws are not a good idea. Profit is powerful motive. If profit convinces a shopowner to move heaven and earth to have ice shipped in–despite all the associated difficulties and hardship in a time of emergency–because he will then reap a fat profit, then, the argument goes, many will benefit. There will be more total ice available. We want extortionately priced ice in our time of need, because the regular cost ice will have already been sold or will not be available at all. Anti-price gouging laws result in fewer necessities being made available to the people for whom they are necessary.
We had a little experience with these concepts this weekend. Returning from Disneyland, Amelia suddenly came down with stomach flu (AGAIN–it just won’t leave our family alone) and was sick. Our minivan was significantly um, impacted. What do you do at 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night upon arriving in a city where you don’t know anyone (St. George, UT) and you have a difficult cleaning job ahead of you? Accessing water and/or electricity would be difficult and we didn’t have any of the appropriate cleaning supplies. I tried to think about what we could buy at Walmart to help, but our lack of access to water and electricity was an obvious limitation. It felt hopeless. (I had unpleasant visions of being the driver of a stained and stinky minivan for the next ten years–never mind the 4+ hours we would have to drive to get home). But Pdad is never without hope. While I told him that it was a waste of time to call the local car detailing places because they simply aren’t open that time of night, he called anyway. No luck, it seemed. But then someone called him back and made an offer–drive out to Hurricane (improbably pronounced Her-i-ken), pay me $150 in cash, and I will fix it for you. To put this in perspective, our local car detailing place would have done all the upholstery in the entire car for $25. Since the entire car was packed with vacation junk, we only wanted one seat done. But–it was Saturday night, it was late, and the guy already knew that vomit was involved. Sold for $150! I think it may be some of the best money we’ve ever spent.
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3 Responses to “When extortion is a good thing”
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What a sad end to a trip! I hope the Disneyland part was much better. And I agree – I would’ve paid the same.
Am interested in where you get your car done! After a throw up incident about a year ago I had our car done at that Firehouse place in American Fork (i think they’re in more locations than just that one) and I’m remembering it being $100. While they did get the smell out, the over all “detailing” job wasn’t very good.
Disneyland was great. Amelia & Duncan especially had a wonderful time. I am going to post more about Disneyland soon, but right now the conclusion of the trip was more vivid!
We take our car to Supersonic in Orem (but there are locations all along the Wasatch front). See http://www.supersoniccarwash.com/detailing_services It looks like I exaggerated how little it costs (which also makes the guy in Hurricane seem more reasonable)–but it is possible to buy packs of coupons for their services in advance and then it’s cheaper. I like how you can pick and choose between their services, just getting the carpet done, or just the vinyl, or just the upholstery–whatever you need and then you don’t pay for the services you don’t need.
I often feel guilty for paying to have someone else detail my car, but I also think I am more likely to drive the car longer if I keep it feeling nice. I hope to drive this van for another ten years. Supersonic does a good job. I love having a clean car. (Of course, it is usually full of papers and other items from the kid’s schools, but I do love it when it is clean).
I have also had this happen. We now ALWAYS carry water, liquid soap, a roll of paper towels and some rags. We just pack it in a bucket in the back. It is usually under everything, but if I have to take out everything to get avoid the smell, so be it. I love fabreze if I can manage to fit it in the car, but soap and water go a long way toward making it livable. Oh yeah, we have a pocket organizer that hangs on the back of the drivers seat, in that we also have wipes and ziplock plastic bags. We have managed to avoid the vomit in the car for the past year by giving them a bag until we can stop. This has been used countless times and the girls reach for the bags at the same time they let us know they are sick. Sorry that you had to go through that! Been there, done that, fingers crossed that we NEVER do it again!
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