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Someone tell me what I'm missing. From this article it seems that the appeal for renters is that it's a more friendly process to rent from Turo than e.g. Hertz

Someone tell me what I'm missing. From this article it seems that the appeal for renters is that it's a more friendly process to rent from Turo than e.g. Hertz. A renter doesn't care if the car is owned by average Joe or by Hertz. So can't Hertz and others simply fight this by improving their renting process? What's stopping Hertz from coming up with an app and completely destroy Turo? They already have the cars, they already have the distribution, they already have the compliance. Now just get an app.

notyourday 9y ago
It is a lot more than that. I have spent last month doing quite a bit of sporadic rentals and it is a pain in the neck. (a) pricing is not transparent what so ever. I can get estimated price but I cannot get the total out of the door price. It makes zero sense in 2018. (b) i can never get a car that I am "ordering". I fail to understand why a Zipcar can do it, but neither Hertz nor Enterprise nor Budget can. If I'm getting an Tahoe, which is expensive which you claimed you have, I'm baffled why the barely coherent employee thinks that a minivan is a "similar vehicle". (c) daily insurance scams - luckily it does not apply to me because $25/trip premium insurance via Amex is easy, automated and just pure awesome but oh my god people who do not know about it are just getting screwed. (d) And finally... why is it that I still cannot search all the locations within a certain area for the cars and prices that I need? Why do I have to repeat the searches for the twenty Hertz in NYC when with a Zipcar or Maven i can just scroll through the map or get a list? If rental car companies were to fix this 99% people like me won't be likely to use "peer-to-peer" because there's nothing worse than driving someone's non-standard, modified, coolant-gauge-may-not-actually-work car.
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  Thanks for this. Could you explain (c)? I don't understand what you mean. Regarding the rest, it sounds like they got used to offering a poor service because they don't have enough competition or something. You might have a point there, but for a competitor to take advantage of that they just need to execute better on those points. They don't really need to source their cars from average Joes... I'm not saying that Hertz isn't shit, I'm just saying that I don't understand how where the cars are sourced from is a real differentiating point. EDIT: I just re-read your last line and it seems you agree.
  - jdpedrie 9y ago
    Rental car companies always try to sell you liability coverage for accidents and damage for about $25/day. Almost every major credit card already includes the coverage for free, so when you opt into the rental coverage, you're needlessly paying a significant premium for something you likely already have.
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      Not really. Credit card coverage is secondary insurance, which means that your automotive liability insurance is the primary. Some cards offer primary coverage, usually for a fee or with a fee-based credit card. That's problematic if you don't have insurance, or if you are in a risk category where some accident or damage to a vehicle will result in policy cancellation or a rate hike with your personal insurance. Some personal policies have different limits or gotchas for incidents related to business travel as well.
    - throwaway_80bf3 9y ago
      This is not true. _Most_ cards do _not_ cover at fault general liability, most cover the damage to the car and that's usually secondary coverage, which is to say if you have insurance already, you will have to utilize that first in case a claim is required. If you fall asleep and drive a car into a house or hit a pedestrian, you better have to have some third party liability coverage. If you have car insurance already you probably have this coverage, but if you don't... you don't. This is a pretty complicated topic and I've done some deep dives into it and found it's not as clear cut as most people seem to believe. What kind of card you have matters, whether you have insurance already matters and even with both of those you need to understand what exactly is covered by who and when. If you don't have insurance you should always get liability. If you don't have insurance and rent a lot you should call up Progressive or National and request a quote for non-owner liability coverage. What one shouldn't do is go around telling people to waive all coverage and that rental car insurance is a scam.
      - jdpedrie 9y ago
        Thank you for the correction. Unfortunately I can't edit my original comment to highlight that anymore. I've certainly always rented whilst having primary coverage from my normal auto insurance and so the distinction wasn't especially important for me. That said (and again, I was incorrect in my first post), some/many credit cards /do/ offer primary insurance coverage for rentals, and anyone renting a car should definitely take the time to check before getting to the rental counter!
- 0xcafecafe 9y ago
  Can't agree more about (b). Last september around a long weekend here on the east coast of US, I had "booked" an SUV since I was planning a road trip with my extended family. In addition to booking it online, I had also called up the office a few days in advance to let them know that I will be picking up the car at 4 pm after my workday is done. When I reached there, I was offered a pickup truck and was told "cars are never guaranteed". I agreed to take any car that can take 5 people and even after that it took then 3 hours to arrange a mid-size sedan for me. What is the point of taking reservations if you cannot honor them? The model is seriously broken and in need of disruption.
  - fwdpropaganda 9y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2GmGSNvaM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2GmGSNvaM
    - 0xcafecafe 9y ago
      :) Almost 30 years later they still don't know how to "hold" a reservation
  - ghaff 9y ago
    If a car company guaranteed a specific vehicle, they'd probably have to charge a premium and have stricter cancellation policies (which most don't have at all now). With SUVs in particular, I find pricing is all over the map if you try to reserve one in advance and, as you say, it's not guaranteed. I find that I have the most luck just using National's Emerald Aisle which lets me pick the car I want when I get to the airport. But it's still not guaranteed--though I've always been able to get an SUV when I've wanted one.
    - 0xcafecafe 9y ago
      I get the people cancel all the time and hence they need to account for it. But in this case I had specifically called them in advance that I will be there to pick up my car and they had confirmed with me that my reservation is good. They still couldn't come through after that. I don't mind they holding on to my credit card when I make the reservation if by doing that they can guarantee a better quality of service.
tim333 9y ago
I imagine at airports Hertz and the like have quite a lot of overhead for a rental office, fees to work from the airport and the like. It would be hard for Hertz to get rid of that.
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  Sure, that's true. The way I think of it is that the rental office cost is their cost of customer acquisition. So the real advantage is that once you get an app install the first time you don't have to keep paying for new customers. Which brings me back, shouldn't an app be something that Hertz should be working on in addition to everything else they've already done?
  - jonknee 9y ago
    But the airport is also where most of the customers are.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  Having a commercial pickup/dropoff of cars occur where people stop to pick up grandma is certainly something airports can’t allow while at the same time charging the rental car companies big money to operate from the airport. While very hard to address, it shouldn’t be harder to address than it is to address the problem of unlicensed taxis at airport arrival. And if the example from the article involved the person renting the car having to meet the renter at a McDonalds parking 5km from the airport, it wouldn’t sound as attractive.
Spooky23 9y ago
Hertz actually owns cars and has to follow the law. The "startup" methodology is to shift everything to schmuck who owns the car. Presumably, if the car owners can rent the cars for less than Hertz, and Hertz has the buying power and scale to buy and maintain thousands of cars for less money than you or I, these individual car owners are either eating costs due their own ignorance, or failing to do things like maintain them properly or follow the relevant law.
- notyourday 9y ago
  Hertz does not own cars. One of gazillion of Hertz affiliated companies owns cars that Hertz markets and rents to customers. The marketing and rental process is stuck in the early nineties.
  - gamblor956 9y ago
    Hertz operates both Hertz-owned facilities (usually airport facilities) and franchised facilities (usually neighborhood facilities). Hertz actually owns its cars, at least at its Hertz-owned facilities. http://ir.hertz.com/2014-11-14-Hertz-Announces-New-U-S-Rental-Car-Fleet-Strategy http://ir.hertz.com/2014-11-14-Hertz-Announces-New-U-S-Renta...
    - notyourday 9y ago
      Pop quiz: which one do you think is hertz in NYS? HERTZ LOCAL EDITION CORP. HERTZ LOCAL EDITION TRANSPORTING, INC. HERTZ MANAGEMENT & EQUITIES CORP. HERTZ MARKETING, INC. HERTZ NY LLC HERTZ REALTY INC. HERTZ SYSTEM, INC. HERTZ TECHNOLOGIES, INC. HERTZ TECHNOLOGY (DELAWARE) HERTZ TRANSPORTING, INC. HERTZ USA INC HERTZ VAN LINES INC. HERTZ VEHICLE FINANCING LLC HERTZ VEHICLES LLC
      - Spooky23 9y ago
        Companies using different legal entities for risk or tax purposes is common in any area of business with lots of tangible assets. Whatever the Hertz holding company is, it controls everything. There's no meaningful comparison to a startup with random people owning title to cars. Same thing when you walk into a CVS. "CVS Elm Street, LLC" isn't meaningfully distinguishable from CVS/Caremark, the parent.
s73v3r_ 9y ago
Well, you just said it yourself, the average user doesn't see a difference. Turo and Hertz are providing the same service. Hence, Turo should be beholden to the same regulations as Hertz. I mean, this just seems like common sense.

notyourday 9y ago

It is a lot more than that. I have spent last month doing quite a bit of sporadic rentals and it is a pain in the neck. (a) pricing is not transparent what so ever. I can get estimated price but I cannot get the total out of the door price. It makes zero sense in 2018. (b) i can never get a car that I am "ordering". I fail to understand why a Zipcar can do it, but neither Hertz nor Enterprise nor Budget can. If I'm getting an Tahoe, which is expensive which you claimed you have, I'm baffled why the barely coherent employee thinks that a minivan is a "similar vehicle". (c) daily insurance scams - luckily it does not apply to me because $25/trip premium insurance via Amex is easy, automated and just pure awesome but oh my god people who do not know about it are just getting screwed. (d) And finally... why is it that I still cannot search all the locations within a certain area for the cars and prices that I need? Why do I have to repeat the searches for the twenty Hertz in NYC when with a Zipcar or Maven i can just scroll through the map or get a list? If rental car companies were to fix this 99% people like me won't be likely to use "peer-to-peer" because there's nothing worse than driving someone's non-standard, modified, coolant-gauge-may-not-actually-work car.

fwdpropaganda 9y ago
Thanks for this. Could you explain (c)? I don't understand what you mean. Regarding the rest, it sounds like they got used to offering a poor service because they don't have enough competition or something. You might have a point there, but for a competitor to take advantage of that they just need to execute better on those points. They don't really need to source their cars from average Joes... I'm not saying that Hertz isn't shit, I'm just saying that I don't understand how where the cars are sourced from is a real differentiating point. EDIT: I just re-read your last line and it seems you agree.
- jdpedrie 9y ago
  Rental car companies always try to sell you liability coverage for accidents and damage for about $25/day. Almost every major credit card already includes the coverage for free, so when you opt into the rental coverage, you're needlessly paying a significant premium for something you likely already have.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    Not really. Credit card coverage is secondary insurance, which means that your automotive liability insurance is the primary. Some cards offer primary coverage, usually for a fee or with a fee-based credit card. That's problematic if you don't have insurance, or if you are in a risk category where some accident or damage to a vehicle will result in policy cancellation or a rate hike with your personal insurance. Some personal policies have different limits or gotchas for incidents related to business travel as well.
  - throwaway_80bf3 9y ago
    This is not true. _Most_ cards do _not_ cover at fault general liability, most cover the damage to the car and that's usually secondary coverage, which is to say if you have insurance already, you will have to utilize that first in case a claim is required. If you fall asleep and drive a car into a house or hit a pedestrian, you better have to have some third party liability coverage. If you have car insurance already you probably have this coverage, but if you don't... you don't. This is a pretty complicated topic and I've done some deep dives into it and found it's not as clear cut as most people seem to believe. What kind of card you have matters, whether you have insurance already matters and even with both of those you need to understand what exactly is covered by who and when. If you don't have insurance you should always get liability. If you don't have insurance and rent a lot you should call up Progressive or National and request a quote for non-owner liability coverage. What one shouldn't do is go around telling people to waive all coverage and that rental car insurance is a scam.
    - jdpedrie 9y ago
      Thank you for the correction. Unfortunately I can't edit my original comment to highlight that anymore. I've certainly always rented whilst having primary coverage from my normal auto insurance and so the distinction wasn't especially important for me. That said (and again, I was incorrect in my first post), some/many credit cards /do/ offer primary insurance coverage for rentals, and anyone renting a car should definitely take the time to check before getting to the rental counter!
0xcafecafe 9y ago
Can't agree more about (b). Last september around a long weekend here on the east coast of US, I had "booked" an SUV since I was planning a road trip with my extended family. In addition to booking it online, I had also called up the office a few days in advance to let them know that I will be picking up the car at 4 pm after my workday is done. When I reached there, I was offered a pickup truck and was told "cars are never guaranteed". I agreed to take any car that can take 5 people and even after that it took then 3 hours to arrange a mid-size sedan for me. What is the point of taking reservations if you cannot honor them? The model is seriously broken and in need of disruption.
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2GmGSNvaM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2GmGSNvaM
  - 0xcafecafe 9y ago
    :) Almost 30 years later they still don't know how to "hold" a reservation
- ghaff 9y ago
  If a car company guaranteed a specific vehicle, they'd probably have to charge a premium and have stricter cancellation policies (which most don't have at all now). With SUVs in particular, I find pricing is all over the map if you try to reserve one in advance and, as you say, it's not guaranteed. I find that I have the most luck just using National's Emerald Aisle which lets me pick the car I want when I get to the airport. But it's still not guaranteed--though I've always been able to get an SUV when I've wanted one.
  - 0xcafecafe 9y ago
    I get the people cancel all the time and hence they need to account for it. But in this case I had specifically called them in advance that I will be there to pick up my car and they had confirmed with me that my reservation is good. They still couldn't come through after that. I don't mind they holding on to my credit card when I make the reservation if by doing that they can guarantee a better quality of service.

tim333 9y ago

I imagine at airports Hertz and the like have quite a lot of overhead for a rental office, fees to work from the airport and the like. It would be hard for Hertz to get rid of that.

fwdpropaganda 9y ago
Sure, that's true. The way I think of it is that the rental office cost is their cost of customer acquisition. So the real advantage is that once you get an app install the first time you don't have to keep paying for new customers. Which brings me back, shouldn't an app be something that Hertz should be working on in addition to everything else they've already done?
- jonknee 9y ago
  But the airport is also where most of the customers are.
alkonaut 9y ago
Having a commercial pickup/dropoff of cars occur where people stop to pick up grandma is certainly something airports can’t allow while at the same time charging the rental car companies big money to operate from the airport. While very hard to address, it shouldn’t be harder to address than it is to address the problem of unlicensed taxis at airport arrival. And if the example from the article involved the person renting the car having to meet the renter at a McDonalds parking 5km from the airport, it wouldn’t sound as attractive.

Spooky23 9y ago

Hertz actually owns cars and has to follow the law. The "startup" methodology is to shift everything to schmuck who owns the car. Presumably, if the car owners can rent the cars for less than Hertz, and Hertz has the buying power and scale to buy and maintain thousands of cars for less money than you or I, these individual car owners are either eating costs due their own ignorance, or failing to do things like maintain them properly or follow the relevant law.

notyourday 9y ago
Hertz does not own cars. One of gazillion of Hertz affiliated companies owns cars that Hertz markets and rents to customers. The marketing and rental process is stuck in the early nineties.
- gamblor956 9y ago
  Hertz operates both Hertz-owned facilities (usually airport facilities) and franchised facilities (usually neighborhood facilities). Hertz actually owns its cars, at least at its Hertz-owned facilities. http://ir.hertz.com/2014-11-14-Hertz-Announces-New-U-S-Rental-Car-Fleet-Strategy http://ir.hertz.com/2014-11-14-Hertz-Announces-New-U-S-Renta...
  - notyourday 9y ago
    Pop quiz: which one do you think is hertz in NYS? HERTZ LOCAL EDITION CORP. HERTZ LOCAL EDITION TRANSPORTING, INC. HERTZ MANAGEMENT & EQUITIES CORP. HERTZ MARKETING, INC. HERTZ NY LLC HERTZ REALTY INC. HERTZ SYSTEM, INC. HERTZ TECHNOLOGIES, INC. HERTZ TECHNOLOGY (DELAWARE) HERTZ TRANSPORTING, INC. HERTZ USA INC HERTZ VAN LINES INC. HERTZ VEHICLE FINANCING LLC HERTZ VEHICLES LLC
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      Companies using different legal entities for risk or tax purposes is common in any area of business with lots of tangible assets. Whatever the Hertz holding company is, it controls everything. There's no meaningful comparison to a startup with random people owning title to cars. Same thing when you walk into a CVS. "CVS Elm Street, LLC" isn't meaningfully distinguishable from CVS/Caremark, the parent.

s73v3r_ 9y ago

Well, you just said it yourself, the average user doesn't see a difference. Turo and Hertz are providing the same service. Hence, Turo should be beholden to the same regulations as Hertz. I mean, this just seems like common sense.