As far as I can tell, Zipcar was intentionally sabotaged after it was acquired by Avis Budget. Over the past few years the prices went up, the cars are dirty, often damaged, and the customer service got worse.

I may be an exception in that I can walk to several rental agencies from my apartment, but renting from an agency usually gets me a nicer car for 24 hours for the same price that I would get a zipcar for 3 hours. If I need a car for less than three hours usually it's cheaper with uber/lyft.

Edit: although they're still the most convenient for picking up furniture, as they have vans.

I wouldn’t be as quick to blame the downfall of Zipcar’s quality on deliberate sabotage. I began using them in 2009 and even back then it was cheaper in a number of instances to rent a car for more than short periods.

Where ZipCar excelled (I haven’t used it for a number of years) was being able to not own a car and effortlessly get one for an errand or quick trip.

These days I rent far more often, and even being part of elite programs and being very experienced with the process it is still far more of a hassle than simply approaching a car you’ve booked online, tapping your RFID card and driving away.

I think ZipCar theoretically still has utility for that type of use-case.

A big drawback also was the inability to select a one-way trip. Sometimes you want to get somewhere and stay for a while, and it’s simply not cost-effective (or efficient) to tie up a car for 3 or 8 hours vs. just driving there.

I believe this is a use case that Car2Go addresses, although I haven’t yet used that.

> These days I rent far more often, and even being part of elite programs and being very experienced with the process it is still far more of a hassle than simply approaching a car you’ve booked online, tapping your RFID card and driving away.

Really? The last time I rented a car in MIA, I showed up, was Enterprise Executive so I went and could choose any of a few dozen cars that had the keys already in the ignition. After that, I drove up to the exit at which point the person pulled up my reservation, scanned the car, and gave me the paperwork. I was out in less than 5 minutes from when I chose the car.

Return was just as easy, just pulled into the lot, someone scanned the car and sent me on my way.

Granted, it's not as easy as RFID and go, and I don't have that much experience with rentals because I don't use them often, but I wouldn't call it "far more" of a hassle, at least in my limited experience.

Jesus, limited experience indeed!

That's how bigger airport car rentals work, you've obviously never rented a car outside an airport location. Non airport car rental locations usually take a lot longer to go through the whole process, no streamlined/staffless way to rent, and have limited hours and a much smaller staff. I think the one by my house is even closed on Sundays. If you have some jackoff in front of you who is fighting with the staff about being turned away for not having a credit card you end up having to wait for the staff to deal with that before they can process your rental[1]. I've also had to wait for the car to be cleaned in the past when they got unexpectedly busy.

On top of that airports are usually not located near where people live. The vast majority of people renting a Zipcar for a day trip are not going to want to go to an airport to pick up their car.

Airport rentals can get significantly backed up during busy times. I've gotten totally gridlocked in the rental car parking lot before.

[1] actually happened to me

I can see the parent's comment. Rentals are fine when you're flying in if you want your own transportation. In a city, the locations and their hours are usually pretty limited. I sometimes do rentals from a city location--usually to return to the airport--but it's always a bit of a hassle.

Zipcar no longer offers reasonable customer service, which means you may not be able to unlock your car, report problems, or extend a reservation. If you call, it will be at least 10 minutes of holding, not so nice when you are locked out of the car you paid for. If your rental car has problems, you want to be able to contact someone who can help. Even if you do get a person on the line, you will find them not very willing to help in any way. Getaround is not much better, but if you already know the car owner, it can be good.

>These days I rent far more often, and even being part of elite programs and being very experienced with the process it is still far more of a hassle than simply approaching a car you’ve booked online, tapping your RFID card and driving away.

I don't have a car right now... and while I haven't rented a car lately, (I'm willing to pay extra for uber/lyft as it means I don't have to drive or deal with parking) I do pretty regularly rent a uhaul van, as the on demand hauling solutions are less convenient and/or more expensive, in my opinion.

The uhaul process is app-based and can be done at the last minute with your cellphone. They do want a cellphone photo of you and of your license, which is then verified quite slowly, but I don't have to personally interact with any humans to get my uhaul van, and it's usually pretty quick.

The Enterprise in my office building (Emeryville) seems to often have full size pickups to rent.

Also had issues even back in 2008 with broken zipcars, got pulled over once when the headlights wouldn't turn on.

What they mean is that they’d like to see private car ownership reduce to the level where cars are utilized for much of the day (by their owners or their owners’ customers.)

Getaround has a bunch of fake owner accounts with automated help lines which I think are actually owned-fleet vehicles.

I think these are actual users who have made so much money renting one car out that they made a business out of buying and renting multiple cars on the platform.

Bingo. Check out how many of the Porsches on Getaround and especially Turo are owned by the same people.

> Except that it depends on private car ownership in order to have cars to rent.

That's not at all a contradiction. If you only drive your car to work every weekday, and I only drive for out-of-town weekend trips, then services like Getaround (as well as traditional rental car companies to some extent) make it so that we don't both need to own a car.

What would you call the state of affairs where only 10% of people own cars and the rest make temporary use of those cars through rental? Would you not call that a dramatic move away from private car ownership? And that is a plausible if distant state of affairs which this enterprise is moving us towards. I think your objection is just a pedantic trick and not substantive.

>But Getaround doesn't want the hassle of owning the cars either; it just wants to collect its cut and leave the hassle to others.

What is a middleman? You make it sound like the "others" in that sentence are getting a bad deal compared to what could be, but what's the alternative? Someone build and maintains a ride sharing app for free as a charity to benefit middle class commuters?

I recently rented a car from a gentleman who said he runs a business taking care of the hassle for others. Manages 10+ cars as his full time job.

That was the most pleasant experience I ever had renting a car for Turo/Getaround.

So the question becomes, why aren't they providing this level of service? Why is the experience so shitty for their vehicle providers that they have to go through a middle man to make it bearable?

Because the whole point of Uber-like services is to externalize the costs and actual work onto others as much as they can possibly get away with.

Yeah, I have a lot of issues with Turo (mostly lack of customer service) but when I find people with specific fleets of vehicles I like (Jeeps usually) I aim for them as they usually make it stupid simple to pick up/drop off which is the huge benefit of Turo. That and renting more unique cars (like Wrangler Rubicons, Porsches if I'm visiting Woodside, etc).

A small fraction of Getaround cars are actually part of their own private fleet. These normally come with Zipcar-like negotiated parking spots. These are my favorite ones to rent when I can.

Zipcar is decidely not the same thing as Getaround. It involves a weeks long process of getting verified, getting your key fob in the mail, etc. and then you can only use the specific run down beat up cars that they own. You then have to find some way of getting to their nearest parking lot, and some way of getting back when youre done. The few times Ive used Getaround it was amazing. Just open the app, put in your CC, and unlock a car from your phone.

I have the exact opposite criticism. My experience has been Zipcars tend to be better maintained, and it's great to know that you'll have a parking spot to bring the car back to.

With Getaround, you have to street park. In some areas (esp crowded ones like SOMA / Mission) that can easily add 15-30 minutes to the end of your trip.

I don't think Zipcar owns the cars. Their model may not be as low touch as Turo or Getaround where you can just list your car. But the cars on the Zipcar platform are owned by other people that have lent it out to Zipcar through a more thorough process.

These models work if you have a small portion of users contributing (in this case providing cars). This is true for services like Wikipedia, etc.

The long-term strategy works, though - "Not driving uber right now? Let somebody else drive your car"

The car manufacturers could probably do it more effectively.