Like most people of my age (I’ll be 59 on Sunday), I’ve owned a car almost since the day I got my licence at 18. But a few months ago, my 20-year-old Volvo V40 went to car heaven and I’m yet to buy a replacement.
This has left me at the mercy of friends and various car-share companies. The friends have been great. The car-share companies? Not quite as good.
My first attempt was to hire a car the traditional way, using an old-style car rental company. I found a car online at a nearby rental outlet. It was listed as ‘available’ on their website but it turned out not to be when I visited the outlet in person. Incredibly, the rental outlet was not able to offer me any other vehicle, big or small.
So I tried Uber Carshare. Originally known as Car Next Door, this involves renting other people’s private cars via a third party company. I have used this twice, with generally good results other than a couple of hiccups.
This week I decided to use Uber Carshare for a third time. As I had the first two times, I found the perfect car at a good rate, only a few minutes’ walk away. The booking went smoothly until I went to finalise the deal and pay. A message advised me that I had an outstanding amount owing.
I had not been aware of this. I checked my account balance to discovered I owed them 15 cents. 15 whole cents?! They’re lucky I hadn’t skipped town!
Anyway, no problem I thought. I’ll pay the 15 cents and make the booking. And this is where things really started to go awry.
I tried paying 15 cents into my account using an online transfer, but I was told deposits had to be at least $1. Fine. I’ll do even better, I’ll deposit $10! That’ll fix it.
Or maybe not. Next message: “Amount cannot be more than what is owed”
It took me a second to process this. So let me get this straight, I said to myself…
* I owe you 15 cents…
* …but I can’t pay you less than $1…
* …and I can’t pay you more than I owe you…
* …which is less than $1.
Checkmate!
Not allowing customers to pay you is certainly an interesting business strategy. I tried to sort out the problem using Uber Carshare‘s chat facilty but no human turned up, even after an hour of waiting.
So today I’m going to try GoGet. This slightly different system involves picking up a car owned by GoGet, using it for a few hours (or days), then returning it to its designated spot.
During the sign-up process I’ve already encountered a couple of speed humps. And I haven’t even borrowed a car yet!
Time will tell if I have a better experience than I did with Uber Carshare.
Are there better options out there? What would you suggest I do until I buy another car in a few months’ time?
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