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I got banned from using Zipcar last year. I lived in a condo building with an under ground parking lot in SF. A few times I rented a Zipcar and left it parked
by cj 7y ago
I got banned from using Zipcar last year.
I lived in a condo building with an under ground parking lot in SF. A few times I rented a Zipcar and left it parked in the parking lot at my condo building.
About 50% of the time, the car would not unlock. In all cases, I successfully contacted Zipcar who informed me the only thing they could do is tow the car (usually 24+ hours later).
The parking lot had no cell service.
Other times I extended the car’s reservation on the iPhone app, but because there was no cell service, the internal Zipcar rfid didn’t get the updated reservation time; and the car locked me out after the original expiration time.
Zipcar probably realized they were losing money due to these issues, and banned me from using Zipcar forever.
Also: Never leave your Zipcar parked very long without cell service... the cellular unit will drain the car’s battery very quickly when it’s constantly searching for a signal...
- sqs 7y agoInteresting. So it caches the authorized zipcards offline for this case, right? Why did it fail to unlock 50% of the time? If it failed, could you just retry, or did it fail 100% of the time in specific bad locations?
- bt848 7y agoThe bit about the cell phone discharge seems pretty unlikely. A charged car battery has at least 2MJ of stored energy. GSM in its highest-power mobile station state draws 800mW. Add maybe another 150mW for the GPS, call it 1W total. The battery should power such a phone for weeks. You should be able to smell-test this fact by considering that your mobile weighs nothing and runs all day whereas a car battery weighs 20kg.
- PetahNZ 7y agoAnecdotal, but if I leave a USB charger plugged into the cigarette socket, without even anything plugged into the usb, it drains my battery overnight.
- oh_sigh 7y agoIf it's not a car from the 80s there may be a fuse you can add/remove which converts your cigarette lighter from always on to only when engine is on. Check the back of your car manual.
- bt848 7y agoGet a refund. I leave a phone plugged into my car's USB port 24x7 and the car has its own GSM modem too and obviously it starts right up every time.
- dharmab 7y agoThe difference is that you're using a USB port directly built into the car (which is "smart" about not draining the battery) while the other user is using a cigarette lighter to USB adapter (the cigarette lighter is a "dumb" circuit).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- allannienhuis 7y agogetting your battery tested might be useful too.
- msbarnett 7y agoYour smell test is a bit misleading in that most car batteries have a drastically lower energy density than Lithium Ion cells. There’s still a lot more energy in the car battery, of course, but not by nearly as much as a naive comparison of the weights would suggest. If it had the energy density of your cell phone, the lead acid battery in your car would only weigh 5 or so kgs. Your cellphone will also last a lot less than “all day” if you take it somewhere where it has to run the radio at full power to try to maintain a connection. I’ve seen otherwise reliable and long lasting phones easily end up burning 1% a minute in areas of really bad signal.
- bt848 7y agoOK, here's another test. A common way to end up with a dead battery is to leave the lights on overnight. The lights on a car draw over 100W (standard halogen headlights and incandescent tail and marker lights). But you can leave your lights on for hours and still start the car. Therefore it stands to reason that the same battery could power a GSM radio for hundreds of hours.
- karlp 7y agoThis assumes the battery is fully charged, if it's cold or if the battery is slightly defective, it could be a lot less than full charge.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- zaarn 7y agoThat assumes the battery behaves the same for low and high current (they don't). Even lithium cells already don't; high currents causes them to warm up, reducing capacity. So a device that draws 1 Watt will last longer than one that draws 10 Watts from a small lithium cell. Lead Acid responds even worse, especially starter batteries, less so on deep cycle, and it's capacity rapidly changes, without temperature influence. A 1 Watt device might only last a day while it's fine starting up an engine with 10 times the total power consumption
- zaarn 7y agoCar batteries are generally a starter battery (minus EV ones). They don't like being closed circuit for extended periods of time. A low current is usually allowed (200mW is the top end in my experience), but anything over will, over time, sulfinate the plates in the battery and cause it too loose charge and capacity rapidly. Generally if you want to run a low current device on a lead acid battery, you should use a deep cycle battery with plates designed for it. Starter battery have large, flat plates to carry a lot of current for only a few seconds tops, then be charged up again.
- dx034 7y agoHonestly, the ban sounds justified to me. If you know that parking in the garage will lead to a 50% probability of them having to tow the car, repeating this is just unnecessary. It would obviously be better if they could handle such scenarios but ignoring a known limitation to incur cost to others (since you have no advantage as you also can't use the car in this scenario) sounds wrong to me.
- brohee 7y agoThe common man would think a company would try the fix with the utmost priority a mission critical issue...
- 2rsf 7y ago> Honestly, the ban sounds justified to me based on the story above I agree, knowingly (and after a few occurrences you should understand there's a problem) damaging the service should lead to a ban or at least a warning.
- jacquesm 7y agoNo, it should lead to someone fixing the problem. The customer centric thinking in this thread is amazing.
- greedo 7y agoOne facet of the problem (the cell coverage) is largely out of Zipcars control, no? I suppose they could add some functionality to their app so that you're alerted when you park at a location without cell coverage?
- alistairSH 7y agoLack of cell coverage is out of their control, but that doesn't excuse them from designing around the problem. It appears they're aware of the problem, but certain known issues prevent access (cellular unit draining car battery seems to be the common one and sounds like something that should be fixable).
- hexo 7y agoZipcar should get banned from such stupid practices and almost liquidating fine for customer deception.
- Kneecaps07 7y agoThat's why I always took the key with me, despite the fact that they tell you not to.
- o_nate 7y agoInteresting. If that really works, perhaps they should add a special asterisk that you should always leave the key in the car unless you're parking in an area with poor or nonexistent cell reception.