Last night, a group of us are out bowling & drinking beer. One of our buddies mentions that he has a friend who is looking for a favor. None of us know this “friend”. The favor consists of flying to another major US city (about 15 driving hours away), picking up a Bentley that he has purchased, and driving it back for him. The only details I know are that the “friend” is looking for two people to do this and is willing to pay for all expenses, in addition to $500/person to have the car delivered. The whole situation seems shady, and frankly, too easy to make $500 for such a short and easy drive. Life has REPEATEDLY taught me that if it seems too good to be true, 99% of the time, it is. Focus: What “too good to be true” situations have you gone with anyway, only to be confirmed, that, yes, it was? Alt Focus: My cousin once did this from TX to NY with a BMW and made some cash (he has no job and knew the guy well). Has anyone ever done this similar deed for someone else before?
In grade seven I was doing a fundraiser of some kind or another. Trying to sell to a classmate, he offered to split a box of chocolate with me. He'd pay me a bit of cash and gave me a love letter from a girl to him. "Think of all the juicy gossip!" he said. I was not popular and thought this gossip might make me cool. So I went through with the deal. Well, everyone else already knew about the letter, and the fucker never bothered paying up, so I had to pay for the whole box and got nothing from it.
Assuming: -5 hours of airport/flight time -15 hours of driving -$1K worth of expenses +$500/person He is paying $100/hr for this retrieval operation. If he can afford a Bentley, it's completely reasonable that he may have a job that pays in excess of $100/hr and thus makes this a positive move for him, especially if his job isn't something he can't conveniently take two days off of.
First of all this whole setup seems shady and ridiculous. There are a ton of fully insured car transport companies that will deliver a car across the country in an enclosed trailer for about 1/3 of what it's going to cost him. Plus he doesn't have to worry about getting McDonald's grease stains out of the seats. Focus: I occasionally take boats to/from different ports on the east coast for money. So far none of the trips have been longer than a few days. A friend of mine also does this on a larger scale. Sailing from New England ports down to the Caribbean islands and vice versa. He was contacted by a very wealthy surgeon that needed his boat picked up in Haiti after the earthquake and taken ANYWHERE. He was offering $25k for the services plus expenses. While $25k cash would be nice there's no fucking way I would have done the trip with him. When I asked if he was going to do it he said he wouldn't have made the trip pre-earthquake let alone post. A friend of his took the job and said it was easy as hell since the sailboat was no where near the quake zone and he only sailed it from Haiti to Jamaica.
I agreed to go on a blind date, purely because I was told that the chick was the twin sister of this other girl I knew. I was all excited about it because she was pretty hot. When I got to the house, I discovered that her twin sister wasn't an identical twin. She was a fraternal twin, and she was about 80 lbs heavier - she had to be pushing 2 bills. I'd like to tell you that I didn't fuck her, but after being on a dry spell for about 8 months, I caved in to the old, "a hole's a hole" philosophy. I guess that's what you get for assuming.
Well, a ways back in the mid to late 90's, I decided to go to law school because "there's always jobs and in any event, I'll develop relevant skills I can use whether I practice law or not." And then, in the late 90's, I got a job at a big law firm (which I left a long. long, time ago), because I thought "a firm this big, with such impressive lawyers, is bound to take an interest in helping me develop as a lawyer." Alt-Focus: As stated by others, there are bonded, insured companies that do this. Also see, "Locked Up Abroad."
I second this. If this dude has a grand to put down to have two strangers pick up a luxury car, then he's got the dough to get a professional and insured company to do it for him. If you decide to do this, you'd best tear that fuckin' thing apart looking for blow or heroin before you drive it back. FOCUS: A few years back I lived in a nice single bedroom apartment, good neighborhood, good neighbors both up and down, close to work, and it had a built-in bar in the living room. In short, it was just about perfect. Problem was, it was a bit pricey. So, in my infinite wisdom I always kept an eye out for cheaper digs and found an ad in the paper that I couldn't resist. $250/month, utilities included, for a basement suite in a place I could still walk to work from! I could hardly believe it. So, I phoned the guy up, checked out the place and in five minutes I was convinced it was worth a move. It wasn't as swanky as the place I was in, but for the money I would be saving, it could pay off in the end. After the move, about a week in, I'm woken up by the barking of not one, not two, not even three, but four fucking dogs at 2:30am. It sucks, but it's a first offense and I figure it's just an aberration. Nope, every day and night from then on, the upstairs tenants and their dogs were making un-fucking-believable noise at all hours. The landlord claimed that this bit of information had "slipped his mind" during the walk-through, which is utter bullshit, because you simply cannot forget something like this. Hell, I couldn't even talk to the upstairs tenants about it because they didn't give a shit, and one of those stupid fucks even had the balls to call me a prairie nigger. Gave my notice after only 11 days there, and couldn't get my old place back.