The problem with car sharing
April 7th, 2010 by Tim Uden
Last year I blogged about car sharing and said it was a viable alternative to car rental. When I visited the USA in September and October I had the chance to try it out and I discovered a major flaw in the car sharing concept.
I signed up for a Zipcar membership and used the service twice. First off I rented a Mini for four hours to visit and review the HI – Marin Headlands hostel near Sausalito. My second rental was in Palo Alto, where I intended to visit a hostel in the Los Altos Hills. I was planning on using Zipcar extensively on the east coast and also planning to make a video blog post demonstrating Zipcar’s new iPhone app. It was after the second rental that I learnt a very expensive lesson about a major issue with the car sharing concept and ended up renting from Hertz instead of getting a Zipcar on the east coast.
Around a week after my second rental I received an email from Zipcar accusing me of damaging the car and I was subsequently charged a USD $500 fee for the damage. I guess I’m lucky this didn’t happen in the UK where the damage fee is £500.
It is appalling customer service to be accused of doing something I clearly didn’t do, even though Zipcar may have every right to charge the damage fee. It could have been handled differently, without implying that a customer was wrong (I know I didn’t damage the car and don’t appreciate being told otherwise).
This whole experience soured my view of the car sharing concept by highlighting a serious flaw in the system. The car lives on the street or in a public car park and the person renting it is responsible for any damage that occurs to the vehicle until the next person takes the car. Unlike a traditional car rental company, there is no employee to check the car when you return it. The car just sits unattended in a public car park where anyone can damage it after it has been returned and the last person to use the car gets the blame (and a USD $500 damage fee).
To Zipcar’s credit they at least have acknowledged that this is an issue and several months after I used their service (several months too late in my opinion) they implemented a damage fee waiver. For USD $50 per year you can reduce the damage fee to USD $250 and for USD $75 per year you can reduce it to nothing. Anyone signing up for the service really should pay the additional fee because it is a lot cheaper than being charged USD $500 for damage that occurs after the car is returned.
Ideally occasional users should have the option of paying a smaller fee per month or per use (rather than per year), although Zipcar’s damage fee waiver is still a step in the right direction. In the UK, this is how City Car Club charge their damage fee waiver, which is a more cash-flow-friendly £5 per month to reduce the damage fee from £500 to £100.
Update
8 May 2010Zipcar has since refunded my $500 damage fee (plus a free day credit).
Although it may seem that they speeded things up because I blogged about the problems I was having, it has become quite clear to me that they do have systems in place for dealing with issues like this. Basically I fill out a form (I remember filling out a form months ago, but can’t remember if I sent it in) explaining the situation, then they look into the case and possibly give a refund.
In my case, I knew I was right but couldn’t prove that I didn’t cause the damage. I returned the car early and neither myself nor Zipcar could tell whether the damage occured during my rental period. In this case it was a matter of my word against Zipcar’s, and they had every right to charge the damage fee (even though I may not have felt it was fair). Even though I wasn’t responsible for the damage, I couldn’t prove that to Zipcar. The car would have been off the road for a day or two while they repaired it meaning that they would have lost money on it, so it was nice that they refunded the entire fee.
I really didn’t expect this. I thought that if anything came from this, they may have come to some sort of compromise where part of the fee was refunded as driving credit, with Zipcar keeping enough to compensate them for the time the car was off the road. Anyway this refund has changed my opinion about Zipcar and I look forward to driving one of their cars again in the future (and using their iPhone app), although I’m currently living around a 16-hour flight from their nearest location so I won’t get a chance to do this until I’m either back in London or when I next visit the USA.
Despite Zipcar resolving this issue for me, the prospect of a renter being held responsible for damage caused after a car has been returned still exists – although that is the case with all car sharing services.
Zipcar – a different type of car rental
September 26th, 2009 by Tim Uden
This week I drove my first car rented from Zipcar, a car sharing agency that is an alternative to a traditional car rental company.
Basically Zipcar’s target market are people who live in big cities and only need a car occasionally. Rather than buy a car, they become a Zipster (a Zipcar member) and rent a car by the hour when they need it. It’s not really a service designed for the traveller, but in some instances it can work out a better option than a regular rental car.
Here are the main differences between car rental and car sharing (à la Zipcar):
- Traditional rental cars require that you rent the car from the rental car office, but they usually let you return the car to a different city; car sharing agencies like Zipcar let members reserve over the internet and pick the car up from reserved parking spaceslocated at strategic points all over the city. Cars from a car sharing agency must be returned to the same car parking space.
- Traditional rental car agencies let anyone walk in off the street and rent a car, but car sharing services like Zipcar only let members rent and it can take several days for a membership application to be processed. It costs USD $75 to sign up as a member in the US or £50 if you sign up in the UK.
- The process of picking up a regular rental car can take around 15 minutes. With a car sharing service like Zipcar you can be driving within a minute or two.
- You rent by the day with traditional car rental companies, but with car sharing services like Zipcar you can rent by the hour (although there is also a daily rate).
- Traditional rental car companies usually have no problem if you want a car for a month or longer, but it is difficult to get a car from a car sharing service like Zipcar for longer than four days (mainly because other members may have previously reserved that car).
- With car sharing agencies you get the exact same car you asked for, none of being ‘upgraded’ to some big ugly car that you didn’t ask for.
- Traditional rental car companies may charge you additional fees for insurance, but car sharing agencies like Zipcar include insurance.
- You are responsible for paying for petrol if you rent through a regular car rental company, but fuel is included with car sharing. In the United States Zipcar includes the first 180 miles (300km) per day free of charge and there is a fuel card provided with the car so you can top it up at Zipcar’s expense.
- Most rental car companies won’t rent to you if you’re aged under 25 and if they do, they will charge you extremely high fees for the privilege. Zipcar only require that you are aged over 21 and they don’t charge you any extra if you only just turned 21.
There are quite a few differences between Zipcar’s service and a regular rental car and it isn’t for everyone, particularly if you’re planning a longer trip. However it is worth considering if you are travelling between big cities by some other form of transport (such as plane or train) and need a car for a few days at a time to explore a specific region, and it may be your only option if you’re aged between 21 and 25.
Because fuel is included and there aren’t any additional charges for insurance, Zipcars and cars from other car sharing services can work out much better value than regular rental cars (as long as you average less than 300km per day).
In the United States most car rental agencies seem to specialise in big ugly boring cars (usually the Hyundai Ascent – which I previously blogged about as being too big an unweildy – is the smallest car on offer). However Zipcar has quite a nice range of small cars, such as the Mini, Honda Jazz and the Mazda 3. Unfortunately like most US-based rental agencies, all North American Zipcars have automatic transmissions, so you’ll feel like an old age pensioner driving without being in full control of your car (however most Zipcars in London are manuals).
My experience with Zipcar
I signed up for a Zipcar membership a few days before flying out to the USA. However my member application meant that I needed to provide a copy of my driving record, which I needed to order a week earlier from Vicroads in Australia (if you’re planning to rent a Zipcar you definitely need to plan in advance). The day I arrived I recieved an email saying I was approved and a couple of days later I picked up my new Zipcar membership card (my Zipcard) from Zipcar’s San Francisco office.
I reserved my Zipcar online on my iPhone (this was around a week before Zipcar was due to release their new iPhone app so I did it through the phone’s built in browser) and was given directions to where the car was parked.
After finding the car I held my Zipcard to the windscreen and the doors unlocked. Then I hopped inside and started the car using the keys attached to the driving column (well it would have been that easy if I was able to work out how to start the car but a combination of not haven driven an automatic in around 15 years and being unfamiliar with starting a Mini – press the start button – meant that it took me a while to work things out, but that is not any fault of Zipcar.
There were a few little quirks that will take a little getting used to (such as leaving the keys in your car when it is parked and refueling using the fuel car under the sun visor) but I think it is worth it for the freedom that Zipcar offers, not to mention the option of having a nice small car instead of the big ugly things that most US rental car companies offer.
My problems trying to start the car notwithstanding, I found Zipcar an easy alternative to a regular rental car and I look forward to using them again; which incidentally will be tomorrow when I pick up a car in Palo Alto in Silicon Valley.
Free one-way car and campervan rentals in New Zealand
July 31st, 2009 by Tim Uden
Many travellers visiting New Zealand fly into Auckland, rent a car or campervan, drive to the South Island and fly out of Christchurch. This means that there is often an excess of rental cars and campervans in Christchurch that the rental companies would rather have in Auckland.
To help solve this problem rental companies sometimes offer free one-way rentals if you’re prepared to travel against the tide and pick up your campervan in Christchurch and drop it off in Auckland. This is a great deal, although you generally have a very tight time frame to make the delivery.
Rather than phone around all the rental companies trying to score a free rental, you can find a free one-way rental deals at transfercar.co.nz.
The Idea of North
March 18th, 2008 by Thomas Maresca
An Auckland native whom I met in the ski town of Ohakune described New Zealanders to me this way: “The farther south you go from Auckland, the friendlier people get. The farther north you go, the weirder they get.”
It was an ungenerous way of putting it, but substitute offbeat or quirky, or maybe just different, for “weird,” and I’d have to say he was on to something.
There’s definitely something about the Far North. Even though New Zealand is tiny, the north feels remote, isolated from the rest of a country that itself already feels isolated. Driving through, I always had the sense that almost anything might be around the next bend in the road, that I was bound to meet somebody . . . offbeat . . . at the next place I stopped. And often, I was right. Transplants from Japan and Germany who were dropping out of their overcrowded countries; hostel owners eager to share salacious gossip from towns that seemed way too small to have so much salaciousness. I really liked it.
In a strange way, the attitudes somehow reminded me of the frigid, northern parts of the U.S. and Canada, even though you’d think it should be the opposite—here in New Zealand, the north is lush, abundant, the most temperate part of the country. Maybe a certain type of person is just attracted to heading as far north as possible, as if following some internal compass.
Anyway, there’s a real feeling of edge-of-the-world remoteness at Cape Reinga, the northern tip of the North Island. From here, you can look out over an unbroken expanse of sea and sky, and see the waters of the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet and churn together. This is where the Maori believe spirits of the dead leave this world for the underworld (Reinga means “underworld”, and the Maori called the cape Te Rerenga Wairua, the “leaping-place of the spirits.”) It’s an undeniably powerful experience.
A couple of practical points if you’re making the drive up to Cape Reinga yourself: One, you should fill up the car in Pukenui; there is a petrol station closer to the Cape in Waitaki Landing, but it doesn’t have a reliable supply of petrol.
Also: drive carefully! The last 21km of road to Cape Reinga is unsealed and very winding. My car was sliding all over the place, and I heard lots of stories of accidents. Driving extra-carefully is sound advice on the North Island in general; roads all over are narrow and winding and there are just so many distracting views.
Fruit and Loathing in Western Australia
March 5th, 2008 by Isak Ladegård
Forbidden fruit
In one of his well known stories, the great doctor of gonzo and bad craziness Hunter S. Thompson is on the road with a trunk full of illegal substances. The car is blasting through the Nevada desert and he is closing in on the state boarder. The wide range of hard drugs he’s carrying is altogether worth too much money to be dumped before the checkpoint is reached. The simple solution is, of course, to consume it all.
I am in a similar situation. The Western Australian desert is record-breakingly dry and the sun is torturous, but my windows are all rolled up and the shitty car stereo works well enough to encourage singing. I am horrible at it, singing, but I am alone and free on the great Australian highway, with nothing to fear, besides flat tires and suicidal kangaroos.
The road from the West to Adelaide is long and my Ford Laser is stuffed with food for 72 hours. After days with cookies and donuts I am now walking the healthy way and the car is full of fruit and veggies; I have bags of apples, bananas, pears and carrots. Then I see it, the Horror: a big and metallic roadside-sign warns with ugly typography that a $2500 fine will be imposed on fruit carrying travellers. It is illegal to carry fruit across the Australian state borders, it seems, and all of a sudden I have 12 apples, 10 bananas, 5 pears and maybe 15 carrots to dump or consume.
The end of Western Australia is four hours away and I dig in in heavy quantities with a compulsive desire to get my money’s worth, secretly missing donuts and cookies.
Beware fellow travelers: forbidden fruit will not kick you out of paradise, but it will cost you $2500 and that is harsh enough. Go for donuts.
Hyundai Accent (rental car review)
February 28th, 2008 by Tim Uden
I had booked a Hyundai Getz for a week driving around Tasmania to update the Tasmanian hostel information on BUG. As usual I asked for a small manual hatchback as they are economical fun cars that I love to drive.
The problem is that rental car companies think they are doing you a favour when they upgrade you to something bigger and I ended up getting upgraded to a Hyundai Accent, which really pissed me off as I hate driving big cars. I know there are many cars that are a lot bigger than the Accent, but it feels like driving an ocean liner when compared with the small zippy hatchback that I had requested. Maybe AVIS should try harder and actually give people the cars they ask for. I guess it could have been a lot worse; they could have upgraded me to an automatic.
After getting settled into the bridge of my ocean liner I negotiated around Hobart’s waterfront and set sail for the Huon Valley. As usual for big cars, it was clumsy to drive and awkward in the city; but I found it surprisingly agile on the open road and it even handled quite well on Tasmania’s many narrow winding roads that make up a large portion of Tasmania’s road network.
Like other larger cars that I had driven. It had an uncomfortable driving position that feels like you are reclining near the back of the car. It is probably just something to get used to and I suppose that people used to big cars would find the opposite uncomfortable when they get behind the wheel of a small car.
It also had the annoying habit of setting off the alarm whenever I turned the key the wrong way when opening the car door. Maybe I have a problem with opening car doors but I’ve been driving for the past 20 years so I figured I should have worked it out by now. I was relieved to discover that it wasn’t a problem with my door opening abilities when, on my travels around Tasmania, I saw other people set off the alarm in their Hyundai rental cars too.
The car could have had a bit more oomph, but it wasn’t as gutless as I expected and it had enough power to zoom up some steep hills. It was one of the better big cars that I had driven but I still would have preferred the car that I had asked for.
On the Wallaby
February 23rd, 2008 by Tiffany Miller
There is something about a road trip through Australia that really stokes nostalgia and gives you that sense of journey which is often missing from package tours and public transport. Rolling hills, the wind in your hair, and a good song, and suddenly life is a highway.
I cannot stress enough how important I think it is to experience this. Far too many travellers jump on the buses and wind up in a different city every few days sampling the pubs and seeing no more wildlife than a dead ‘roo on the roadside every once in a while. Get your own wheels. Get on the wallaby (and find out what that means). Here are your options:
Car. Hire a car from any of the 5 billion rental agencies. Pretty straightforward. Or buy a car from one of the 5 billion sales ads posted on hostel notice boards and try not to get ripped off. Something to consider is buying from a dealer with a buy-back guarantee- that saves you the headache of trying to sell it to another wary traveller at the end.
Camper/Kombi van. Hire a camper. Check out the most popular (and so least likely to rip you off) companies around, like Wicked Campers (the ones with the psycho graffiti all over them), Hippy Campers (the ones with the flower power all over them), and Calypso Campervans ( the ones with nothing all over them- in case you want to be a little more low-key)…
You may want to head north on the buses, and then hire a camper for the trip back down south. I have met heaps of travellers who decided halfway up the coast that they should have done the self-drive thing.
Hostels often offer free pick up service, but for out-of-the-way places this can be a real hassle. You initially take the bus option because you think it will be easier, but it ends up being more of a pain in the long run. Although some Australian towns and cities are excrutiatingly sign-deficient, driving is for the most part straightforward (albeit on the other side of the road). And when you see the sign for Yungaburra, you can (and should) take it.
Just two rules: don’t drive like an idiot and wind up with a $250 fine. And don’t buy a car on its last legs/diff gears and wind up stranded in a mining town in the Outback. Believe me, it’s not pretty.
But everything else is.
Australian Driving Tips for Rightsiders
January 23rd, 2008 by Tiffany Miller
Besides our obvious handicap of driving on the right (and for some of us, being used to an automatic transmission.. ahem..), there are a few things to learn about Australian traffic rules before you start your “roady.”
First thing’s first: roundabouts. Many of us, unfortunately, have never driven through them. The most important thing to remember- go left! But before you glide into oncoming traffic, yield to any cars already in the roundabout. Then, keep to the left if you are going left or straight ahead. If there are two lanes, pull into the right (inside) lane and use your right indicator (blinker). Also, remember that your indicator is on the right. I can’t say how many times I have switched lanes using my windscreen (windshield) wipers. And always signal left when exiting.
This isn’t New York. Don’t use your horn unless your’e about to have a smash (accident).
Driving on the highways is pretty straightforward. Stay to the left; go right when overtaking. And save your car (and your heart) some damage by trailing a large truck or bus. Those koala signs are not just there for photo-ops. Hitting a kangaroo will do serious damage; swerving to miss it could do worse. Mornings and sunsets are the most dangerous times.
Then, find yourself a buddy or two. Not only will this help with petrol costs, it may save your life. Many points of interest are two or three hours apart. So get yourself a passenger (hostel walls are the perfect place to advertise), put on some driving tunes (no Radiohead, please) and fill up the coffee mug. The long stretches of highway, are full of dreamy coastline and hills of dramatic gum trees. It is lovely, but after a while it will put you to sleep. Many Aussie towns’ and cities’ road signs are scarce, so get a navigator and a good road map, and get off the beaten track.
Diahatsu Sirion (rental car review)
December 17th, 2007 by Tim Uden
I rented a Diahatsu Sirion from Avis at Wellington Airport for a week of driving around New Zealand’s North Island.
It has a high driving position and is a nice zippy car for city driving, but it has some flaws that affect its performance in some driving conditions.
Like the Diahatsu Terrios, which I normally drive at home, it accelerates slowly (or as Jeremy Clarkson would say, “with most cars you measure accleration with a stopwatch, but with this you need a calendar”), it is sluggish climbing steep hills and it is unstable on tight corners. They both have a 1.3 litre engine, so you would expect the larger Terrios to be a bit sluggish, but the smaller and lighter Sirion really should do fine with a 1.3 litre motor.
It is usually lots of fun driving a small manual hatchback on winding roads, but each time you take a corner the Sirion car feels like it will roll over so you have to really slow down on each corner (at least until you get a good feel for the car), but at least going uphill you don’t pick up enough speed to need to slow down.
Despite its drawbacks, I still like the Sirion. I wouldn’t buy one and if a competing rental company offered something nicer I would probably rent that instead, but I would still be happy driving one around.
Toyota Yaris (rental car review)
December 11th, 2007 by Tim Uden
I rented a Toyota Yaris from Hertz at Blenheim Airport for four days of driving around the Marlborough Sounds (at the top end of New Zealand’s South Island).
I had always found Toyota a bit boring. The Corolla is the world’s most popular car and the Camry (which is way too big to appeal to people who like small cars and too small to appeal to those that like big cars) is normally seen driven slowly in the fast lane by old geezers. But the past few years has seen Toyota updating its image with a more design-oriented range with cute and trendy cars like the Echo, Prius and the Yaris.
I really liked the Yaris. It is a really fun car to drive, it looks good and is surprisingly spacious (although the boot is a bit small). The model I had was a 5-door hatch with a digital dashboard display.
I took it all around the Marlborough Sounds, which included loads of narrow winding unsealed roads, and it handled like a dream and it had no problems when I put the foot down on the rare occasion that I came across a flat bit of road.
It is a great zippy little car that handles well, has a small turning circle and is easy to park in tight spaces. I would certainly look for one again next time I need to rent a car, and would consider buying one (although I still prefer the Citroen C1) next time I’m in the market for a new car.
