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These services tend to cater for the people who reside permanently in a particular city / country though. So not really useful for a traveler. I used to use Dr
by alibarber 5y ago
These services tend to cater for the people who reside permanently in a particular city / country though. So not really useful for a traveler.
I used to use Drive Now as they were in ‘Europe’ (I.e. geographically spread across the continent) and they were even at the airport in Helsinki. Then they pulled out of London and Helsinki (and others) where they had been ubiquitous claiming that it was un-profitable. Before that it was ideal though as you could unlock a car at any airport or city with the same app, credit card, agreement etc. And the cars were basically identical too!
Now I have no desire to sign up for a different app/service etc in each city in a language I probably won’t understand and have to get familiar with how they operate (where can you park it, for how long, etc) so it’s back to the familiar rental car desks.
- wheels 5y agoI hadn't tracked which cities they'd pulled out of, and have used them in a few places. But my point was more that there's no structural reason for the rental friction, other than to upsell people. The risk profile, and things that need to be handled are basically identical for car sharing and car rental, and car sharing makes the process seamless, while car rental makes it intentionally annoying.
- alibarber 5y agoAbsolutely - that is indeed a valid point. It would seem though that these sharing operations seem to be going after a different - perhaps newer and bigger, market slice than the traditional agencies. It would indeed be great if they could bring this new way of operation to those too.
- garaetjjte 5y agoIsn't car sharing significantly more expensive?
- alibarber 5y agoIt usually is, but there is a reasonable ‘convenience factor’ that sometimes tipped it. Of course, multi-day long road trip in another country that I plan in advance, hit up Kayak and the major agencies, no question.
- wheels 5y agoYes, but not insanely so. A compact car for a week with Share Now is €42/day, and with Sixt it's €32/day. In a lot of cases, I'd happily pay that for the 1-2 hours of saved time in not dealing with the rental company, or booking things in advance. I know specifically a lot of my friends who basically fall into that category: don't own a car, and decide same-day that they want to do a weekend trip, and would rather pay €20 more to not deal with contract, aggressive up-selling, pick up and drop off, refueling, inspection, etc.