I wish keys were given when cars are rented. I had a recent experience where the car told me the virtual key had low battery or something like that. I feel that when I pay to rent something I should not have to worry about things like that. I also wish the prices for smaller cars was less than the price of an SUV- not just by $1-$2. I do have to say though that if there is a working gas card in the car (I have had cars without this) this makes it worth the price more. I also wish there were more cars available. Hopefully eventually there will be outside of the city as well. This is MUCH better than getting ubers though for short trips or something.
TS
Tammie S.
Zip cars are ok
Zip cars are ok. The prices are expensive & the quality of the car isn’t matching the price! They are definitely overpriced! An they have a limited quantity so the choices aren’t many. The weekend prices are ridiculously high and normally they give only 200 miles so if ur ubering/doordashing you will go over a they will charge u an expensive fee! Im starting to think they aren’t worth it! Before I started I was ok until they started with all these additional fees!
JG
James G.
Great concept, lackluster execution
The reason I registered for Zipcar was that, because I live in a big city, parking fees are absurd around here with long waiting lists for monthly parking, it's difficult to own a car here. I used zipcar for a year and I think I have enough experience with them to draw up an opinion about their service. First off, the registration went smoothly. I was approved within few hours and I'm ready to go. There was an issue about the zipcard, which is the card that is used to unlock the car. I never received it, so I requested a a new one, waited for a month or so and didn't receive it either. After 3 attempts and waiting for months, I gave up on the card, because even though a little inconvenient, the app can be used to lock/unlock the car, which I was doing from day 1.
Once I started using the service I realized it's not as convenient as it sounded like originally. First, you have to reserve the car hours or days in advance. You're lucky to find a car in a weekend unless you book it days in advance. Also, you can't easily extend the reservation once you got in the car. If you got into traffic on your way back, there is no guarantee that you can extend and there is a hefty penalty for missing the deadline. So you end up reserving the car for more time than you need. At that point, 10-15/hour + fees, it's cheaper to get a car from the likes of Avis or just use Uber.
Next issue is with the quality of the cars. They are not dirty or smelly, but they are so faded and used. It felt like these cars were driven a million miles and sometimes makes weird noises on the interstate. So I'm not comfortable driving this far even though they have a 180 mile/day.
In the end mostly I ended up either using Uber or renting a car from Avis for longer trips (even though I have to pay for parking at night) rather than dealing with the stress and inconvenience. I did use Zipcar at times such as for store pickup where I can predict the time, but I can't rationalize paying $70/year just for that rare occasion, so I decided to cancel the service.
This is a great concept for city dwellers like me, but I feel like the execution is lacking. I think if they can increase the number of cars where somebody can just reserve a car in 5 minutes (I don't mind even if they are extremely basic micro cars) and a way to extend in mid-trip without paying absurd fees, I would like to give it another try. But until that I'm out.
