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I just returned from a trip to Boston. While there I rented a car from a major agency. I've rented cars plenty of times over the years and it is usually a mildly annoying experience: you wait in line for 30 minutes, you get 10 minutes of upselling at the counter, you get FUDed about having "secondary insurance", you have to inspect the car with the representative - if you miss a dent then you're responsible, etc. This is the normal level of annoyance I am used to.
This time, I encountered another annoyance: cashless toll roads and bridges of which there are apparently many on the East Coast of the US. The toll fees are a couple of dollars if you pay cash but very often there is no cash option and you just see a sign telling you you will be billed by mail. Uh oh... you know that is going to hurt. True enough, if you happen to cross one of these cashless tolls you will get billed by the rental agency for $14.95/day of your rental plus the $1.75 actual toll charge. This is a bridge too far and I am looking for alternatives.
With Uber eating into the taxi business, I started wondering about peer-to-peer car rentals. A little duckduckgo-ing turned up a wikipedia article with a couple of companies looking promising, e.g. getaround and hubber. Has anyone used these? Are there hidden fees and annoyances? Dare I ask... what about tolls? ;)
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday June 20 2015, @07:37AM
I know most of you aren't in Switzerland, but the company "Mobility" here provides a really good rental solution [mobility.ch]. They have cars scattered all over the country, especially by train stations but also just in centrally located parking lots.
- You have to be a member, which gets you an RFID card. This costs $100 or so per year.
- You reserve cars by the half-hour, online or with an app.
- You walk up to the car, hold your card to the windshield; it unlocks, and you drive off.
- When you're done, you return the car to where you picked it up.
- You are obligated to leave the car with at least 1/3 tank of gas; there's a service-station charge card in the car.
- If you need more time, and the car isn't reserved, you can extend your reservation.
Obviously, there's a lot of trust here: that you don't leave the car full of trash, that you return it on time, etc, etc.. I've never had a problem, though - the system works surprisingly well. It works so well that I have one friend who sold his car and uses only Mobility (granted, his daily commute does not require a car).
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Saturday June 20 2015, @02:15PM