Car2Go – Issues with "Co-Drivers"

[Sue]

I, like many of you, signed up for Car2Go when the expansion into WS was announced, and used the special code for free registration and 30 minutes free. I signed up, and then sent an invite to my husband to be a co-driver on my account, and he signed up with the code as well to also get the 30 free minutes and the free registration. We would get one bill, and we both got our own member cards to use. Sounded easy.

My husband decided to take a car for a spin last week to test it out and use his minutes. He drove 39 minutes and then we got a charge on our credit card for the drive, with no credit of minutes. I emailed to ask about this, and was told that he couldn’t use the minutes because he was “driving under my account” and there was some error because he hadn’t entered his credit card, so he can’t drive “under his name” but under mine, and if he’s driving under my name, then he can’t ever use free minutes, mine nor his. It never asked him for a credit card because he’s a co-driver under my account where I gave a credit card. 10 emails back and forth and the policy just seemed to get more and more confusing and made no sense.

We called today to speak to them about what was going on, and ultimately made the decision to remove him as a co-driver and just make his account his own, with his own credit card, and made sure that they gave him the 30 minutes of credit and the free membership they owed him. They agreed and did it, and as of now it looks correct on both our accounts online. We’ll see what happens when he goes to use his free minutes later this week.

I didn’t put this in “rants” as it’s not so much a rant about Car2Go as a heads-up if you chose to sign up a co-driver to make sure that everything is as it is supposed to be on your account. Even in one of their emails they said (in reference to driving on his account vs. my account) that “The co-driver concept is a little silly …” They were very responsive to my issues, very helpful in trying to resolve them (even if a bit confusing), and ultimately did fix it pretty quickly.

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[DBP]

So other than that, what was the experience like?

Does it seem like a good value?

Are those itty-bitty cars fun to drive? Scary?

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[WSB]

Side note:

Car2Go’s addition of more cars in Seattle is up before some City Councilmembers today, and as a result, some Twitter friends shared the uploaded map for where their West Seattle area will be – posting that in “news” soon. Note the sliver near the ferry dock, as well as the larger area.

http://clerk.seattle.gov/~public/meetingrecords/2013/transportation20130312_5c.pdf

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[Sue]

David, I didn’t personally drive the car (my former co-driver did), but he had said in his email to me after his first drive “It’s got some power, but there is a brief delay before that power kicks in. So you really can’t cut someone off, but it’ll have enough kick for a somewhat tight merge. Maneuvering has a learning curve, mainly because of driving a vehicle about ½ the length of a typical car.”

He seemed to think it was a good experience overall. A 39 minute trip (where he drove 2 miles but took several stops for errands) cost us $16.40. They charge per minute, plus tax. We wouldn’t normally rent one for that type of situation, but he thought he was using free minutes and wanted to check the car out, how it worked, etc., while it was free (which, as I mentioned, ultimately wasn’t.) He did say that entering the PIN multiple times for every stop and start was a bit of a nuisance, but a good safety measure. One thing he emailed to them about the experience was “Acceleration was a bit choppy with hesitating gear changes. Not sure if that indicates a problem, or if that is normal for Smart Cars.” (My comment: If it’s 3 cylinders, I’m guessing normal … based on my driving in a 3 cylinder Geo Metro way back when.)

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[DBP]

Thanks, Sue.

A quick two-mile trip to the store and back would be cheaper in a taxi, I’m thinking, but Car2Go’s $16.40 beats a taxi for 39 minutes of use. So Car2Go sounds like a good choice if you’ve got lots of little stops to make and you’re a good trip planner.

How far did your former co-driver have to travel to pick up the car? (I assume he just dropped it off near home when he was done.)

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[Sue]

I think his trip was within SoDo and downtown. Right now the home area doesn’t extend to WS, so he wouldn’t be able to drive it home and leave it there yet until it’s fully approved to expand the area. (See WSB’s home page article on that.) I think he picked it up a few blocks from his office.

He’s going to try it again later this week, using his actual credit. He has to make a trip between SoDo and Madrona that takes like 15 min. by car, but can take an hour by bus with transfers and walking (he’s 1/2 mile from the nearest bus) and there are usually cars near his office. While bus is obviously cheaper, sometimes faster trumps cheaper. We share one car, but sometimes this option will be beneficial to us.

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[sam-c]

I am not super familiar with their use policies (brief check on the website, and it seems like you need to hand over your email to get more info).

it looks like you find the closest car on a smartphone, and then go get it, then leave it in a legal parking spot when you are done.

but I had a question- if you are out and about doing errands like your husband, isn’t there a chance another car 2 go user might come and start using the car while you are stopped and doing errands inside the store?

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[JanS]

Sam-C..that occurred to me, too. I realize that having cars all over the place on the street is a selling point. But…if 17 bucks gets you 39 minuted, an hour will be more. Zipcar, while not available as much as Car2Go, only costs 11 bucks an hour mostly. Gas/insurance provided, 180 free miles. West Seattle does have a dearth of Zipcar vehicles, so doesn’t work for everyone, of course.

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[Sue]

sam-c, there’s a way to park the car without making it available to others, from what I understand. You’re still paying for it while it sits at the curb, but it shows as unavailable for anyone else to pick up, and will only respond to your card and PIN, and until you actually log out of the trip.

Jan, it’s by the minute, at a maximum of $13.99 per hour. The rest of that was tax. (A few years ago there was some regulation that allowed car sharing to be taxed like car rentals – used to not be the case.) So that is the maximum you’d be charged per hour (The $17 including the tax.)

I used to have ZipCar, and that $11/hr also has tax added to it. The big difference is that ZipCar has to be returned to the same place you picked it up. And they only rent in 30 min. intervals. Car2Go you rent by the minute, so you could theoretically take it out for 5 minutes if you just had to carry something heavy a short distance. And you don’t have to return it to the same place. The rules about leaving it are that it must be in a spot in the “home area” that allows parking for 2 hours or greater, and it cannot be a spot where at some point it’ll change to restricted parking (like some of the streets downtown that say no parking from 4-6pm … you don’t know if someone else will rent the car before the regulation changes).

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