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Turo Requires a Driver's License Number and Credit Card to Show Full Price

132 points by tr3ntg 5y ago

I know they're simply following Airbnb's model of showing only the daily price, then tacking on extra fees at checkout, but it's hostile to the customer. When the minimum final cost is 50% more than the list price, I suppose deception is the best way to drive signups. Ironically, I may have been more likely to complete my purchase had I seen true numbers from the start. The initial fee had me thinking it was remarkably affordable.

megafauna 5y ago
Last week I went through the tedium of providing all of the requisite information when trying to book a 2014 Toyota Prius for 1 day @ $50.40 through Turo. On the final step of the reservation flow, Turo revealed an additional $50.40 service fee. Seeing the total price double didn't sit well. I promptly exited the reservation flow and deleted my account. I agree with your sentiment - if the app shared the service fee prior to the final step of the booking flow, I may have still reserved the car. Even at a total of $100.80, the price was still less than other nearby options.
- gnicholas 5y ago
  What was the fee putatively for? Was it a cleaning fee that would have been less per day on a longer rental? It doesn't seem right to call something a "service fee" if it doubles the total purchase price.
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    Engaging at any level with the idea that the fee is for any purpose other than lying about price in advertisements is giving it too much credit.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      From a customer’s point of view, absolutely. But fees are many times also used to avoid or evade taxes and royalties. For example, resort fees can be used by hotels to avoid paying royalties to the franchisor. There is never any good excuse to hide or gatekeep the total price from a customer though.
    - gnicholas 5y ago
      You're right. I was thinking about Airbnb, which has cleaning fees that can be pretty hefty on one-night rentals. And those are understandable because someone needs to come in and change the sheets/towels, wash dishes, etc. But there's no "bedsheets" analog for a car rental. Yes, it needs to be washed, but I imagine most renters of Priuses don't actually care if the car hasn't been washed in a few days/weeks.
      - wccrawford 5y ago
        I agree that that service should be considered in the price of the rental, but I disagree that it should be separate from the rest of the rental fee. It's required, and it's only separated out to make the rental look cheaper, right up until you get hit with that fee.
        ghaff 5y ago
        >it's only separated out to make the rental look cheaper, right up until you get hit with that fee That's certainly one reason. But it can also make sense to have a one-time fee that's independent of the duration of the rental. Cleaning a room is the most obvious example. But there are other more or less fixed overheads that are largely independent of the length of time something is rented. If you're renting out just about anything, would you prefer seven 1-day rentals or a one week rental?
      - jjoonathan 5y ago
        > those are understandable because someone needs to Nope. The rest of this sentence doesn't even matter: if someone needs to do something, that's a reason to charge for it, but not a reason to hide the price.
      - CPLX 5y ago
        That's not quite true. The car has to be inspected and gotten ready for rental. Consider the amount of work involved for the owner in renting one car to 30 people each for one day and one car to one person for 30 days and you'll see the difference.
    - lkxijlewlf 5y ago
      I'm waiting for the "free" car rental where the actual cost is wrapped up in fees.
  - cheriot 5y ago
    iirc they add insurance cost at check out, but I've mostly used GetAround lately.
- Jarwain 5y ago
  Turo's service fee feels very random and inconsistent. I was looking at renting a car in LA for a day and the service fee was the same price as renting the car, across most of the cars. If I changed the query to be a two day rental, then the service fee dropped to 1/10th the 1day price. In a Different city, though, even the 1 day rental doesn't have such a large fee.
- sixothree 5y ago
  The thing that bothers me the most is that the price of the rental is literally just the sum of the fees. And they are intentionally hiding parts of the cost. It's not just a dark pattern, it's an outright lie.
- standyro 5y ago
  My trick with their system is to just look at every car, click through to the final receipt screen and then go back to find the cheapest one. It's a bit tedious and deceptive to the customer to present variable fee at the last part of the checkout process. Probably the worst modern "dark pattern" that I hope regulators take a look at.
  - forgotmysn 5y ago
    I share your sentiment, but I'm not sure there are any legislators I trust to understand or regulate dark patterns effectively.
    - car_analogy 5y ago
      I believe advertising a false price is already illegal. "On the internet" doesn't change that, so afaik no new legislation is needed, only some minimal will to enforce what is already on the books.
    - mindslight 5y ago
      Despite the shiny new veneer created by computers, this is a very old dark pattern called "fraud". While there are definitely shortcomings and failures of regulators, I'd say we're better off expecting them to generally crack down on fraud rather than not.
    - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
      Dark patterns in general, yes, but I'd think "The displayed price must include all fees" would be easy to write into law.
      - ARandomerDude 5y ago
        I think people would find ways to partially skirt the law using formulas. There are some legitimate uses for formula pricing, e.g., rent a U-Haul with a per-mile cost, or a cell phone bill with a per GB data cost, or a per-user SAAS model. I imagine a dark pattern for the "resort fee" might be a complicated formula described in words in size 6 font at the bottom of the page if you took the time to read the footnote.
- kodah 5y ago
  This is basically Uber Eats' business model. They sell you on the price of food as you would get it from the store, then they tack on a service fee, the driver tip, a driver fee, etc... The cost of the meal from selection to checkout doubles.
FireBeyond 5y ago
Turo is a haven for money laundering. In my area you can "find" multiple Chrysler 300Cs for rent for $600/day. I say "find" because many of them are unavailable for days or even weeks on end as being rented. Good scam if you're, say, a dealer. Have one of your customers "rent" your car through Turo at an inflated rate. Bonus: you don't even have to let them have your car. They're just paying you and saying they rented it.
- nickpinkston 5y ago
  How would that be different that doing this on any eComm platform? I don't understand what's unique about doing it through Turo.
  - jayrot 5y ago
    It's not all that unique, it's just that "daily car rentals" are pretty amorphous. Similar to how the car wash was the go-to money launder on Breaking Bad. If you have some other eComm platform telling T-shirts or whatever, sure there could be fake orders but it wouldn't be all that hard to track down that these THINGS were never sent/made. But anything involving a service...well, it's much harder to prove that those things DIDN'T happen.
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > It's not all that unique, it's just that "daily car rentals" are pretty amorphous It’s also tough to verify an actual transaction happened. With most e-commerce, the equivalent would involve shipping around boxes of rocks to generate tracking numbers.
    - mattnewton 5y ago
      Car wash flow is slightly different right? Because it is a cash heavy business - in that case the "laundering" happens through cooking the books to make the business seem more successful (with more cash inflows) than it actually has. That cash comes from some illicit activity with different parties than the car wash and slowly supplements the main income from running the legitimate business. In the turo example, unless I am misunderstanding, the drug dealer or whoever is providing an illicit service asks for payment through a car rental? And so now your customers have knowledge and participation in the laundering scheme.
saddestcatever 5y ago
It's an interesting dark pattern... I understand when products are compared directly: Uber vs. Lyft, Uber Eats vs. Grubhub, etc. Often consumers are looking at the exact same product and purely deciding based on price. I can see what a company would add that dark pattern to squeeze every dollar they can get. AirBnb, Turo? I don't get it, are folks comparing the purchases directly to "other" products?
- smelendez 5y ago
  > AirBnb, Turo? I don't get it, are folks comparing the purchases directly to "other" products? Sometimes to hotels and car rental chains. But also people glance at these sites to ballpark the cost of a vacation, get their hearts set, and come back later (maybe after booking flights) and only then see the full price.
- educaysean 5y ago
  My haphazard guess from zero evidence: they may have ran some A/B testing on their platform that compared showing full price vs hiding the fees, and have come away with the conclusion that their conversion rate is x% higher when deploying the dark pattern. What such studies fail to measure is the cost of eroding brand trust, but this is just one possible scenario.
site-packages1 5y ago
I have had good experiences renting on business trips with Turo itself. I wanted more exotic cars than what I might get at Hertz so created an account and all that. It's true the price goes up substantially from the originally stated rate though, maybe I didn't quite see the discrepancy because I had already created an account. My biggest gripe with Turo, and the reason I don't use it much, is it's really inconvenient, even though you book through the app. For example, I land at SFO. With Turo turns out to get the stated rate you need to go to the car's location, which ime is usually some inconvenient neighborhood where the owner lives. SO it's kind of weird Lyfting to some neighborhood to get a car. Otherwise it's like an extra $80-150 to have the car waiting at SFO (or whatever airport). Then returning is the same ordeal. I am a bit used to the dark pattern in the app they and places like AirBnB employ, for better or worse I'm used to it, and so never really get my hopes up until I see the final checkout price right before hitting "Reserve" (which adds friction because the fees are never the same across cars/homes). One thing that I think would make Turo viable for business travelers like me in the future would be a much more frictionless delivery process, perhaps acquiring a rental area at airports like the regular car rental companies have and not adding giant fees to avoid inconvenience. Put the onus on the person providing the car to have the car at the expected place at the expected time.
- CPLX 5y ago
  They used to have a lot near LAX that sort of functioned as you describe, not sure if that's still true.
silverpepsi 5y ago
Never used them though definitely wanted to based on much more interesting vehicle choices. I swear they're reliant on customer good luck and ignorance. There is no way to get insurance for these, and most people think their personal insurance covers it. In fact, it's super hard to get the correct info out of your own insurance company and you have to go up a level on support before you get the bad news that if anything went wrong you're not covered and you'd be royally screwed
AcerbicZero 5y ago
I'm a bit of a car guy, so I thought it might be worth trying Turo.....however even in larger areas I would rarely see anything reasonable to rent, and even the base cars seem a bit pricey. Then I read a few horror stories of getting scammed on Turo (via pet fees or other vague airBnb style scams) and running into Kafkaesque "modern customer support" from Turo which scared me off for good.
trollied 5y ago
Other fees at checkout aside, regarding requiring a driving license no: Surely they require your license number so that they can check if you have any violations/tickets/etc? Wouldn’t you get a cheaper rental with a clean license? Makes sense to me, I must be missing something.
- hnburnsy 5y ago
  Go make a rental car reservation, no company that I know of asks for your DL to show you a price with fees. Even booking as a guest I don't think they ask for it until you get to the counter.
meetups323 5y ago
In a recent Airbnb thread employees [1] were justifying their work by discussing how each individual patch looks minuscule, but via employing a bandit with sufficient arms the changes aggregate to yield fantastic returns for investors. This is that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30928349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30928349
landa 5y ago
To go against all the negative comments here - I love Turo and use it all the time. The comment regarding money laundering doesn't even make sense - Turo charges for insurance and fees, it would be an expensive way to launder money. The fact that you don't see the final price right away is annoying but not uncommon. It's usually way cheaper than traditional car rental companies, anyway.
- gunapologist99 5y ago
  But, you can decline the extra insurances through a traditional car rental company, even if the salespeople hassle you to buy them or insist on seeing your actual liability (!) card (which is not proof of rental coverage anyway.) It doesn't sound like you can decline these coverages through Turo, which (if truly mandatory) would make them deceptive, especially if they are generating profit through them.
  - xeromal 5y ago
    You can completely decline coverage on Turo for a car. They give you a big fat warning to be careful as your insurance may not cover a Turo car (which is true for some providers), and you're SOL if something happens. Depending on the price of the car, they may take a 2k deposit for an accident, but that's pretty normal. It's returned to you once the car is returned.
    - jopperdoop 5y ago
      In what world is a $2,000 deposit to rent a car normal? I’ve never deposited north of $300. Ever. In any country in the world. Including when I decline coverage. Including when I present local identification to the branch (which flags theft risk). What a weird thing to normalize given how exclusionary it is to the vast majority of the world’s population. Though I guess we are talking about car rental via a smartphone, so we’re already somewhere on the exclusionary spectrum. Rental companies figured out the actuarial model for what they do some time ago. If Turo is hitting you with $2,000 to take the vehicle, they have no clue how to model risk and are probably arrogant about their approach compared to the staid, boring incumbents. Either that or they just don’t have enough volume to spread the risk. Or are you renting a $250k vehicle every time?
BW1ARC 5y ago
https://www.carscoops.com/2022/04/two-arizona-nissan-dealerships-forced-to-pay-500000-in-fines-for-false-price-advertising/amp/ https://www.carscoops.com/2022/04/two-arizona-nissan-dealers... FWIW, more of the same; same as it ever was.
BW1ARC 5y ago
FWIW, same as it ever was: https://www.carscoops.com/2022/04/two-arizona-nissan-dealerships-forced-to-pay-500000-in-fines-for-false-price-advertising/amp/ https://www.carscoops.com/2022/04/two-arizona-nissan-dealers...
bound008 5y ago
While I absolutely loathe dark patterns, I just wanted to share one thought. They may have to "add" you to their insurance plan or carrier before renting you the car. That infuriating service fee might actually be personalized for your driving record. As for the credit card, it is user-hostile at best to demand this before being able to see a price. I wish there was an easier way to complain about businesses that openly violate terms of the standard merchant agreements. Imagine a physical store requiring you to swipe a credit card before being able to enter. Amazon had to allow for customers without phones or credit cards at their "Go" stores for compliance reasons.
- justin_oaks 5y ago
  Any list price that excludes additional fees should be shown as "Base price" or, better yet, explicitly list what types of additional fees have yet to be added to make up the final price. For variable fees, you could show a range of prices to show the minimum and maximum possible, or show the base price with an approximate or estimated additional fee. There are LOTS of ways to be open and clear with the customer about these things without being deceptive.
- dogman144 5y ago
  Common misconception that may vary state to sate - insurers insure the car, not the driver, and a lot of the follow-on driver specific fees can be fine-print disputed if you really want to go to the mat over it.
Apocryphon 5y ago
How does Getaround compare?
- theodorton 5y ago
  I’m not sure about the US, but their European service is very transparent on pricing (they offer two different products between the two markets). Some edge cases are generally hard to cover though, especially for unauthenticated users browsing: young driver fees and increased insurance premiums if you’d like a lower deductible. Disclaimer: co-founded a P2P car sharing service in Norway that was acquired by Getaround in 2019.
splatcollision 5y ago
Turo is a haven for scams of all kinds. Renters will offer airport pickup and drop off when you’re buying, but then bait and switch after you’re on the ground, crying about local police enforcement of ride share type airport drop offs. Since their major use case is people on vacation, they are perfectly fine with taking advantage of people in the name of “disruption”. Good riddance. If it seems too good to be true, it is.
- jrootabega 5y ago
  I actually got a ticket in the airport dropoff area while I was trying to get familiar with the car. :) But I'm sure there are liars. I have the same feeling overall now, though. The same car had a huge bulge in its tire that they were either negligent about, or deliberately hid. And they have to take a picture of your ID to complete the handoff. The kind of people who have a fleet of fancy cars to rent out like this? Yeah, you don't want them having a picture of your ID.
tsunamifury 5y ago
Airbnb, DoorDash, Turo and others need to stop with the outright price lying. I’m a repeat customer let me turn on “true price” option somewhere because it makes me want to use your products LESS. Jfc product manager of growth how do you live with yourself.
- hnburnsy 5y ago
  Even most ticket resellers now let you view the prices with fees (although I find the setting clears after each new search).
- hackernewds 5y ago
  The egregious thing with Turo is that it even says "Total price" explicitly that doesn't match the daily price. And STILL tacks on more fees
paxys 5y ago
I have never seen the appeal of services like Turo for the owner. I bought a nice car last year and it stays in the garage most of the time. I could still never imagine renting it out to random strangers for weekend trips regardless of profitability (which would be tiny considering the cut they take). If you have a clunker that you don't care about then sure, but Turo prides itself on its upscale selection. Who is renting these cars out?
- tortilla 5y ago
  People who rent out their non-primary cars. Some are just running a mini car rental business.
- mike_d 5y ago
  People who don't need to drive all the time, but want a car that is out of their budget.
- ghaff 5y ago
  It probably wouldn't appeal to me, but I just stayed at an AirBnB in Maui for part of my vacation. The owner offered to optionally rent their Jeep Wrangler through Turo if I was interested. I already had another rental (at less than half the price) but for someone who was "Yeah, let's rent the cool Jeep," she'd have approximately doubled her take from the stay given the car rental would have been not all that much less than the room rental. So, yeah, I get there's some associated risk and effort, but it is probably pretty tempting for some to collect a fairly hefty rental fee on an otherwise unused or little used asset.
- swozey 5y ago
  I've used Turo a lot - most of the people renting cars own a fleet of rental cars, like AUdis, etc. Their entire side gig is renting out those cars. They meet you in a parking lot with their other cars. I've almost always had a better experience with Turo than any rental agency, except one rental that was in pretty bad disrepair and had a battery die on me on the top of a mountain.
jiayo 5y ago
In Canada, Airbnb recently settled[^1] a class-action lawsuit for their illegal practice of "double-ticketing"[^2], that is, showing one price on their marketing page and another significantly marked up price at checkout time. [1] https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/airbnb-settles-6-million-class-action-lawsuit-some-canadians-eligible-for-up-to-45-credit-1.5778567 https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/airbnb-settles-6-million-cla... [2] https://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/eng/00522.html https://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/eng/0...
paxys 5y ago
Airlines were notorious for these practices (super low advertised price followed by a dozen surcharges at checkout), then a single law made them declare the full final ticket price up front for all reservations. The result – airlines are happy because all their competitors have to abide by the law as well and so everyone is on a level playing field, and customers are happy because their experience is infinitely better. This law should really apply across the board for all purchases.
- 30367286 5y ago
  Agreed, and it should include the prices in brick and mortar stores. There is no reason not to print the price and the price+tax together.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    Tax is predictable and consistent, at least.
umrashrf 5y ago
I am making Turo alternative. https://www.riamuapp.com https://www.riamuapp.com it’s not launched yet but soon!

132 points by tr3ntg 5y ago

megafauna 5y ago

Last week I went through the tedium of providing all of the requisite information when trying to book a 2014 Toyota Prius for 1 day @ $50.40 through Turo. On the final step of the reservation flow, Turo revealed an additional $50.40 service fee. Seeing the total price double didn't sit well. I promptly exited the reservation flow and deleted my account. I agree with your sentiment - if the app shared the service fee prior to the final step of the booking flow, I may have still reserved the car. Even at a total of $100.80, the price was still less than other nearby options.

gnicholas 5y ago
What was the fee putatively for? Was it a cleaning fee that would have been less per day on a longer rental? It doesn't seem right to call something a "service fee" if it doubles the total purchase price.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  Engaging at any level with the idea that the fee is for any purpose other than lying about price in advertisements is giving it too much credit.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    From a customer’s point of view, absolutely. But fees are many times also used to avoid or evade taxes and royalties. For example, resort fees can be used by hotels to avoid paying royalties to the franchisor. There is never any good excuse to hide or gatekeep the total price from a customer though.
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    You're right. I was thinking about Airbnb, which has cleaning fees that can be pretty hefty on one-night rentals. And those are understandable because someone needs to come in and change the sheets/towels, wash dishes, etc. But there's no "bedsheets" analog for a car rental. Yes, it needs to be washed, but I imagine most renters of Priuses don't actually care if the car hasn't been washed in a few days/weeks.
    - wccrawford 5y ago
      I agree that that service should be considered in the price of the rental, but I disagree that it should be separate from the rest of the rental fee. It's required, and it's only separated out to make the rental look cheaper, right up until you get hit with that fee.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        >it's only separated out to make the rental look cheaper, right up until you get hit with that fee That's certainly one reason. But it can also make sense to have a one-time fee that's independent of the duration of the rental. Cleaning a room is the most obvious example. But there are other more or less fixed overheads that are largely independent of the length of time something is rented. If you're renting out just about anything, would you prefer seven 1-day rentals or a one week rental?
    - jjoonathan 5y ago
      > those are understandable because someone needs to Nope. The rest of this sentence doesn't even matter: if someone needs to do something, that's a reason to charge for it, but not a reason to hide the price.
    - CPLX 5y ago
      That's not quite true. The car has to be inspected and gotten ready for rental. Consider the amount of work involved for the owner in renting one car to 30 people each for one day and one car to one person for 30 days and you'll see the difference.
  - lkxijlewlf 5y ago
    I'm waiting for the "free" car rental where the actual cost is wrapped up in fees.
- cheriot 5y ago
  iirc they add insurance cost at check out, but I've mostly used GetAround lately.
Jarwain 5y ago
Turo's service fee feels very random and inconsistent. I was looking at renting a car in LA for a day and the service fee was the same price as renting the car, across most of the cars. If I changed the query to be a two day rental, then the service fee dropped to 1/10th the 1day price. In a Different city, though, even the 1 day rental doesn't have such a large fee.
sixothree 5y ago
The thing that bothers me the most is that the price of the rental is literally just the sum of the fees. And they are intentionally hiding parts of the cost. It's not just a dark pattern, it's an outright lie.
standyro 5y ago
My trick with their system is to just look at every car, click through to the final receipt screen and then go back to find the cheapest one. It's a bit tedious and deceptive to the customer to present variable fee at the last part of the checkout process. Probably the worst modern "dark pattern" that I hope regulators take a look at.
- forgotmysn 5y ago
  I share your sentiment, but I'm not sure there are any legislators I trust to understand or regulate dark patterns effectively.
  - car_analogy 5y ago
    I believe advertising a false price is already illegal. "On the internet" doesn't change that, so afaik no new legislation is needed, only some minimal will to enforce what is already on the books.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    Despite the shiny new veneer created by computers, this is a very old dark pattern called "fraud". While there are definitely shortcomings and failures of regulators, I'd say we're better off expecting them to generally crack down on fraud rather than not.
  - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
    Dark patterns in general, yes, but I'd think "The displayed price must include all fees" would be easy to write into law.
    - ARandomerDude 5y ago
      I think people would find ways to partially skirt the law using formulas. There are some legitimate uses for formula pricing, e.g., rent a U-Haul with a per-mile cost, or a cell phone bill with a per GB data cost, or a per-user SAAS model. I imagine a dark pattern for the "resort fee" might be a complicated formula described in words in size 6 font at the bottom of the page if you took the time to read the footnote.
kodah 5y ago
This is basically Uber Eats' business model. They sell you on the price of food as you would get it from the store, then they tack on a service fee, the driver tip, a driver fee, etc... The cost of the meal from selection to checkout doubles.

FireBeyond 5y ago

Turo is a haven for money laundering. In my area you can "find" multiple Chrysler 300Cs for rent for $600/day. I say "find" because many of them are unavailable for days or even weeks on end as being rented. Good scam if you're, say, a dealer. Have one of your customers "rent" your car through Turo at an inflated rate. Bonus: you don't even have to let them have your car. They're just paying you and saying they rented it.

nickpinkston 5y ago
How would that be different that doing this on any eComm platform? I don't understand what's unique about doing it through Turo.
- jayrot 5y ago
  It's not all that unique, it's just that "daily car rentals" are pretty amorphous. Similar to how the car wash was the go-to money launder on Breaking Bad. If you have some other eComm platform telling T-shirts or whatever, sure there could be fake orders but it wouldn't be all that hard to track down that these THINGS were never sent/made. But anything involving a service...well, it's much harder to prove that those things DIDN'T happen.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > It's not all that unique, it's just that "daily car rentals" are pretty amorphous It’s also tough to verify an actual transaction happened. With most e-commerce, the equivalent would involve shipping around boxes of rocks to generate tracking numbers.
  - mattnewton 5y ago
    Car wash flow is slightly different right? Because it is a cash heavy business - in that case the "laundering" happens through cooking the books to make the business seem more successful (with more cash inflows) than it actually has. That cash comes from some illicit activity with different parties than the car wash and slowly supplements the main income from running the legitimate business. In the turo example, unless I am misunderstanding, the drug dealer or whoever is providing an illicit service asks for payment through a car rental? And so now your customers have knowledge and participation in the laundering scheme.

saddestcatever 5y ago

It's an interesting dark pattern... I understand when products are compared directly: Uber vs. Lyft, Uber Eats vs. Grubhub, etc. Often consumers are looking at the exact same product and purely deciding based on price. I can see what a company would add that dark pattern to squeeze every dollar they can get. AirBnb, Turo? I don't get it, are folks comparing the purchases directly to "other" products?

smelendez 5y ago
> AirBnb, Turo? I don't get it, are folks comparing the purchases directly to "other" products? Sometimes to hotels and car rental chains. But also people glance at these sites to ballpark the cost of a vacation, get their hearts set, and come back later (maybe after booking flights) and only then see the full price.
educaysean 5y ago
My haphazard guess from zero evidence: they may have ran some A/B testing on their platform that compared showing full price vs hiding the fees, and have come away with the conclusion that their conversion rate is x% higher when deploying the dark pattern. What such studies fail to measure is the cost of eroding brand trust, but this is just one possible scenario.

site-packages1 5y ago

I have had good experiences renting on business trips with Turo itself. I wanted more exotic cars than what I might get at Hertz so created an account and all that. It's true the price goes up substantially from the originally stated rate though, maybe I didn't quite see the discrepancy because I had already created an account. My biggest gripe with Turo, and the reason I don't use it much, is it's really inconvenient, even though you book through the app. For example, I land at SFO. With Turo turns out to get the stated rate you need to go to the car's location, which ime is usually some inconvenient neighborhood where the owner lives. SO it's kind of weird Lyfting to some neighborhood to get a car. Otherwise it's like an extra $80-150 to have the car waiting at SFO (or whatever airport). Then returning is the same ordeal. I am a bit used to the dark pattern in the app they and places like AirBnB employ, for better or worse I'm used to it, and so never really get my hopes up until I see the final checkout price right before hitting "Reserve" (which adds friction because the fees are never the same across cars/homes). One thing that I think would make Turo viable for business travelers like me in the future would be a much more frictionless delivery process, perhaps acquiring a rental area at airports like the regular car rental companies have and not adding giant fees to avoid inconvenience. Put the onus on the person providing the car to have the car at the expected place at the expected time.

CPLX 5y ago
They used to have a lot near LAX that sort of functioned as you describe, not sure if that's still true.

silverpepsi 5y ago

Never used them though definitely wanted to based on much more interesting vehicle choices. I swear they're reliant on customer good luck and ignorance. There is no way to get insurance for these, and most people think their personal insurance covers it. In fact, it's super hard to get the correct info out of your own insurance company and you have to go up a level on support before you get the bad news that if anything went wrong you're not covered and you'd be royally screwed

AcerbicZero 5y ago

I'm a bit of a car guy, so I thought it might be worth trying Turo.....however even in larger areas I would rarely see anything reasonable to rent, and even the base cars seem a bit pricey. Then I read a few horror stories of getting scammed on Turo (via pet fees or other vague airBnb style scams) and running into Kafkaesque "modern customer support" from Turo which scared me off for good.

trollied 5y ago

Other fees at checkout aside, regarding requiring a driving license no: Surely they require your license number so that they can check if you have any violations/tickets/etc? Wouldn’t you get a cheaper rental with a clean license? Makes sense to me, I must be missing something.

hnburnsy 5y ago
Go make a rental car reservation, no company that I know of asks for your DL to show you a price with fees. Even booking as a guest I don't think they ask for it until you get to the counter.

meetups323 5y ago

In a recent Airbnb thread employees [1] were justifying their work by discussing how each individual patch looks minuscule, but via employing a bandit with sufficient arms the changes aggregate to yield fantastic returns for investors. This is that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30928349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30928349

landa 5y ago

To go against all the negative comments here - I love Turo and use it all the time. The comment regarding money laundering doesn't even make sense - Turo charges for insurance and fees, it would be an expensive way to launder money. The fact that you don't see the final price right away is annoying but not uncommon. It's usually way cheaper than traditional car rental companies, anyway.

gunapologist99 5y ago
But, you can decline the extra insurances through a traditional car rental company, even if the salespeople hassle you to buy them or insist on seeing your actual liability (!) card (which is not proof of rental coverage anyway.) It doesn't sound like you can decline these coverages through Turo, which (if truly mandatory) would make them deceptive, especially if they are generating profit through them.
- xeromal 5y ago
  You can completely decline coverage on Turo for a car. They give you a big fat warning to be careful as your insurance may not cover a Turo car (which is true for some providers), and you're SOL if something happens. Depending on the price of the car, they may take a 2k deposit for an accident, but that's pretty normal. It's returned to you once the car is returned.
  - jopperdoop 5y ago
    In what world is a $2,000 deposit to rent a car normal? I’ve never deposited north of $300. Ever. In any country in the world. Including when I decline coverage. Including when I present local identification to the branch (which flags theft risk). What a weird thing to normalize given how exclusionary it is to the vast majority of the world’s population. Though I guess we are talking about car rental via a smartphone, so we’re already somewhere on the exclusionary spectrum. Rental companies figured out the actuarial model for what they do some time ago. If Turo is hitting you with $2,000 to take the vehicle, they have no clue how to model risk and are probably arrogant about their approach compared to the staid, boring incumbents. Either that or they just don’t have enough volume to spread the risk. Or are you renting a $250k vehicle every time?

BW1ARC 5y ago

https://www.carscoops.com/2022/04/two-arizona-nissan-dealerships-forced-to-pay-500000-in-fines-for-false-price-advertising/amp/ https://www.carscoops.com/2022/04/two-arizona-nissan-dealers... FWIW, more of the same; same as it ever was.

BW1ARC 5y ago

FWIW, same as it ever was: https://www.carscoops.com/2022/04/two-arizona-nissan-dealerships-forced-to-pay-500000-in-fines-for-false-price-advertising/amp/ https://www.carscoops.com/2022/04/two-arizona-nissan-dealers...

bound008 5y ago

While I absolutely loathe dark patterns, I just wanted to share one thought. They may have to "add" you to their insurance plan or carrier before renting you the car. That infuriating service fee might actually be personalized for your driving record. As for the credit card, it is user-hostile at best to demand this before being able to see a price. I wish there was an easier way to complain about businesses that openly violate terms of the standard merchant agreements. Imagine a physical store requiring you to swipe a credit card before being able to enter. Amazon had to allow for customers without phones or credit cards at their "Go" stores for compliance reasons.

justin_oaks 5y ago
Any list price that excludes additional fees should be shown as "Base price" or, better yet, explicitly list what types of additional fees have yet to be added to make up the final price. For variable fees, you could show a range of prices to show the minimum and maximum possible, or show the base price with an approximate or estimated additional fee. There are LOTS of ways to be open and clear with the customer about these things without being deceptive.
dogman144 5y ago
Common misconception that may vary state to sate - insurers insure the car, not the driver, and a lot of the follow-on driver specific fees can be fine-print disputed if you really want to go to the mat over it.

Apocryphon 5y ago

How does Getaround compare?

theodorton 5y ago
I’m not sure about the US, but their European service is very transparent on pricing (they offer two different products between the two markets). Some edge cases are generally hard to cover though, especially for unauthenticated users browsing: young driver fees and increased insurance premiums if you’d like a lower deductible. Disclaimer: co-founded a P2P car sharing service in Norway that was acquired by Getaround in 2019.

splatcollision 5y ago

Turo is a haven for scams of all kinds. Renters will offer airport pickup and drop off when you’re buying, but then bait and switch after you’re on the ground, crying about local police enforcement of ride share type airport drop offs. Since their major use case is people on vacation, they are perfectly fine with taking advantage of people in the name of “disruption”. Good riddance. If it seems too good to be true, it is.

jrootabega 5y ago
I actually got a ticket in the airport dropoff area while I was trying to get familiar with the car. :) But I'm sure there are liars. I have the same feeling overall now, though. The same car had a huge bulge in its tire that they were either negligent about, or deliberately hid. And they have to take a picture of your ID to complete the handoff. The kind of people who have a fleet of fancy cars to rent out like this? Yeah, you don't want them having a picture of your ID.

tsunamifury 5y ago

Airbnb, DoorDash, Turo and others need to stop with the outright price lying. I’m a repeat customer let me turn on “true price” option somewhere because it makes me want to use your products LESS. Jfc product manager of growth how do you live with yourself.

hnburnsy 5y ago
Even most ticket resellers now let you view the prices with fees (although I find the setting clears after each new search).
hackernewds 5y ago
The egregious thing with Turo is that it even says "Total price" explicitly that doesn't match the daily price. And STILL tacks on more fees

paxys 5y ago

I have never seen the appeal of services like Turo for the owner. I bought a nice car last year and it stays in the garage most of the time. I could still never imagine renting it out to random strangers for weekend trips regardless of profitability (which would be tiny considering the cut they take). If you have a clunker that you don't care about then sure, but Turo prides itself on its upscale selection. Who is renting these cars out?

tortilla 5y ago
People who rent out their non-primary cars. Some are just running a mini car rental business.
mike_d 5y ago
People who don't need to drive all the time, but want a car that is out of their budget.
ghaff 5y ago
It probably wouldn't appeal to me, but I just stayed at an AirBnB in Maui for part of my vacation. The owner offered to optionally rent their Jeep Wrangler through Turo if I was interested. I already had another rental (at less than half the price) but for someone who was "Yeah, let's rent the cool Jeep," she'd have approximately doubled her take from the stay given the car rental would have been not all that much less than the room rental. So, yeah, I get there's some associated risk and effort, but it is probably pretty tempting for some to collect a fairly hefty rental fee on an otherwise unused or little used asset.
swozey 5y ago
I've used Turo a lot - most of the people renting cars own a fleet of rental cars, like AUdis, etc. Their entire side gig is renting out those cars. They meet you in a parking lot with their other cars. I've almost always had a better experience with Turo than any rental agency, except one rental that was in pretty bad disrepair and had a battery die on me on the top of a mountain.

jiayo 5y ago

In Canada, Airbnb recently settled[^1] a class-action lawsuit for their illegal practice of "double-ticketing"[^2], that is, showing one price on their marketing page and another significantly marked up price at checkout time. [1] https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/airbnb-settles-6-million-class-action-lawsuit-some-canadians-eligible-for-up-to-45-credit-1.5778567 https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/airbnb-settles-6-million-cla... [2] https://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/eng/00522.html https://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/eng/0...

paxys 5y ago

Airlines were notorious for these practices (super low advertised price followed by a dozen surcharges at checkout), then a single law made them declare the full final ticket price up front for all reservations. The result – airlines are happy because all their competitors have to abide by the law as well and so everyone is on a level playing field, and customers are happy because their experience is infinitely better. This law should really apply across the board for all purchases.

30367286 5y ago
Agreed, and it should include the prices in brick and mortar stores. There is no reason not to print the price and the price+tax together.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Tax is predictable and consistent, at least.

umrashrf 5y ago

I am making Turo alternative. https://www.riamuapp.com https://www.riamuapp.com it’s not launched yet but soon!