Anyone converted to ZipCar?

jeffsmith

Hi,

After my car has recently failed it's MOT, I'm considering just using ZipCar.

I used my car about once a week for supermarket trips - could potentially switch to using online delivery for that. Also made a longer (3-4hr round trip) trip about once a month.

Has anyone had experience of switching to using ZipCar? From looking at some articles online it seems that:

PROs:
Cheaper
Cars in good condition
CONs:
Less convenient - you have to be more organised.
Some drivers charged with damage that they didn't cause. Mitigation for this seems to photograph the car before and after, so you have evidence of it's state.

Thanks

DUTR

Never heard of them, however I'm not sure why so many count a failed MOT test as the end of the world? It's not like the old days where lots of welding etc would be required for the car to pass, an out of alignment headlight can fail an mot, just get the faults corrected if not to costly and you are good to go for many months.

dacouch

They're customer service is very friendly, open 24/7 and based in Wimbledon.

I've found their staff always helpful and friendly even when I ring at 5am.

There's a log in the glove box which notes any damage to the vehicle, if you spot some damage and it's not in the book ring zipcar up and report it. There can be problems if you park the car up undamaged and it's vandalised or hit between when you drop it off and when you pick it up.

It might be cheaper to hire a normal car for longer trips

londonTiger

I use their service to hire vans for my business. It's up to you to do the math and work out if it's cheaper to use a car pooling service than own your own car.

Add up, Annual cost for insurance, plus maintenance plus fueld and road tax and see if just using zipcar for the odd occasional trips is worth it.

I would only consider zipcar if the total zipcar cost for the whole year was 1/3 or less of my annual expendture on car ownership.

You can't really put a price on convenience of owning a car - freedom to take a detour (you can't really do that in zipcar as you're billed by the hour). Putting your accessories and stuff in the car and what not. These things are priceless.

With regards to shopping with zipcar, I burnt out my £75 free credits I received from zipcar just before it expired. I went to pick something up from ikea and I had that thought looming in the back of my mind (1hr here is costing me £8).

In the grand scheme of things £8 is nothing considering I pay £1500 on insurance, road tax & fuel a year.