No Stupid Questions

35694 readers

1178 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)

Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.

Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.

Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.

Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.

Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.

Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.

Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.

Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.

Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

114

My elderly parents' car broke down a couple hundred miles away. How can I get them and their car home (or fixed) with a minimum of cost and hassle? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

My parents were driving to the beach for vacation. Their car broke down in a small city just under 100 miles from their destination and about 250 miles from home. It's under warranty, but the nearest dealership is 50 miles away (in a completely different direction than either home or the beach), and of course neither a dealership nor local independent mechanics will be open until Monday. I'm mechanically-inclined but they're not, so trying to diagnose it and do a hotel parking lot repair seems like a no-go. They have roadside assistance that covers a tow to the nearest mechanic, but presumably not 50 miles to a dealer. They were worried about not getting a refund for their prepaid hotel reservation (a couple thousand bucks), but the hotel apparently let them reschedule it to next week.

I think they're trying to get quotes from towing companies now, but my wild guess is that a 90-mile weekend tow would be pretty expensive, let alone a 250-mile one. I really have no idea, though.

It seems to me that our options include:

Limp it or have it towed to a local mechanic and be stuck in the city they're in until it's fixed.
Have the car towed 50 miles to the nearest dealer and be stuck in that city until it's fixed.
Have the car towed 90 miles to the dealer at their destination, move their hotel reservation back to its original date, and have it fixed while they're on vacation.
Have the car towed 250 miles to home.
Rent a U-haul box truck and an auto trailer and tow it to the dealership at the beach themselves ($194).
Rent a U-haul box truck and an auto trailer and tow it home themselves ($369). (They're leaning towards this, but leery because they haven't towed anything in decades.)
Have me drive out to meet them, rent the U-haul box truck and trailer, and let me tow it home while they drive my car home.
Have me rent a towing-capable pickup truck here, drive out to them, rent an auto trailer there, and have me tow it home. (The trouble with this is that "car rental" places only have light-duty pickups that might not have suitable hitch and/or tow rating, "truck rental" places aren't open until Monday, and Home Depot, which rents F-250s and is open on Sunday, apparently prohibits towing except for equipment rented from them.)

Any advice is welcome!

UPDATE: They picked the "rent a U-haul box truck and an auto trailer and tow it home themselves" option, and have made it home safely. Thanks for all the advice!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can send messages to other lemmy users. Go to their user page, click Send Message. It only works between lemmy instances (e.g. you can't message someone on Kbin).