Images by Nissan/Infiniti
A woman in Cornwall, Ontario accidentally drove away in someone’s Infiniti after mistaking it for her Nissan rental car, the local police posted on Facebook. After two weeks, she returned what she though was her rental car, and complained about how “unkept” it was before realising her mistake. Here’s how the Canadian woman wound up in such an embarrassing mess.
“PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE YOUR KEY FOBS IN YOUR VEHICLE WHEN NOT BEING OPERATED, YOU NEVER KNOW WHO MIGHT TAKE IT!” reads the warning at the end of Cornwall Community Police Service‘s hilarious Facebook post.
This comes after an incident in late June in which a woman in the town of roughly 50,000 drove a black Nissan Sentra rental car to Walmart, went shopping for a bit, and then drove home in a black Infiniti. It was a QX50 crossover, CBC reports, and not the Sentra sedan she had rented, though both cars were outfitted with keyless ignition (the Infiniti’s keys were in the car).
Upon noticing that his vehicle was missing from the parking lot, the Infiniti owner contacted the Cornwall Community Police Service to report it stolen. But for two weeks, the man went without his luxury crossover as the woman drove the car around town nonchalantly.
But then she returned to the rental agency (an Enterprise roughly one mile from Walmart, according to CBC) and this supremely awkward exchange occurred, per the Cornwall police:
For the next two weeks, the woman drove around and used the black car for her regular everyday activities. This weekend, the woman re-attended the car rental company in order to return the vehicle. Once inside, the woman spoke to the Manger and commented about how unkept the inside of the vehicle was and the fact that there was a set of golf clubs in it as well. The woman was not impressed and handed over the keys.
CBC describes the woman’s complaints further, quoting Constable Mackay:
She was upset because the ashtray was dirty, there were papers in the glove box, and there were golf clubs in the back. And she was giving the manager the business on renting her a dirty vehicle,” MacKay said.
The Cornwall Community Police Service’s post goes on to say that the manager of the rental agency noticed, based on the logo, that the keys the woman had brought were not those of the car she had borrowed. So the manager took a look at the vehicle, and asked where she had gotten it, to which the woman responded that she had picked the car up from the rental car company.
That’s when the manager figured out what was wrong, because the Infiniti’s owner had apparently come to that very Enterprise to borrow a car after his was stolen, with CBC quoting Constable Tommy MacKay:
The man whose car was stolen came into the same Enterprise to rent a car after realising his car was no longer in the Walmart parking lot.
“In conversation with the manager of that establishment it came out that he was the owner of a black Infiniti that was recently stolen,” MacKay said.
Two weeks later, when the woman tried to return that very same vehicle, the manager clued in.
Realising what had happened, the manager asked the woman where she’d gone after leaving the rental agency two weeks prior, and the two went on a little trip to Walmart. The Cornwall police writes what happened next:
The Manager asked the woman to attend Walmart with him in order to have her point out where she had parked. Upon arrival, the woman directed him to the area where she parked and there sat the Black Nissan Sentra.
God that must have been awkward.
The post goes on to say that the woman, who was “a wee bit embarrassed,” and the rental car store manager brought the car to the rental agency and contacted police. From there, the authorities took care of it.
“Both the car rental company and the Infinity owner,” the police’s Facebook post reads, “retrieved their vehicles and there was a happy, and funny ending to this story!”
It is indeed a funny ending to a story that the police implies could have been avoided had the key fobs not been left in the car. Though I suggest a better way to avoid accidentally stealing someone’s car: Stop driving boring beige-mobiles.