Why can’t a simple car rental go smoothly? It would, if the clerk didn’t push the auto insurance, and if the customer would merely ignore the clerk’s guilt-ridden pitch.

Sadly, I fell for the ploy recently, and have been kicking myself every since. Twenty bucks a day for insurance I simply did not need. I left the counter in a sour and surly mood. Not the way to start a mini-vacation.

I was naïve enough to think that the chirpy face behind the counter would process my application quickly and painlessly. Just as it seemed we were wrapping up, she hit me with the pitch.

After inquiring about my deductible (I have Comp and Collision), she claimed that they’d come after my insurance company anyway in the event of an accident, regardless of who is at fault. So there I was standing at an airport rental agency counter with a million things on my mind—none of them related to renting a blasted car for three days—trying to digest this woman’s self-centered sales pitch.

Those insurance plans are useful for people without the proper insurance on their vehicles. At a minimum, they can provide peace of mind. But they also are profit generators for the car rental firms and a source of commission for the clerks.

I’m still steamed about the incident several days later. So much so that I vowed never to do business with Enterprise Rent-A-Car again. Not entirely fair to that company, to be sure—all rental agencies push the blasted auto insurance—but I will forever associate Enterprise with the bad experience I had at an airport rental office recently.

Moral of the story: Stand your ground when pressured by pushy, commission-based salespeople. Don’t buy something you don’t need, or you’ll regret it for a very long time.