I'm none of those things, and when I've rented the experience has been great.

> On the several occasions I used one of the big car rental companies, I'd pay in excess of $80/day for a midsize sedan, trek to a branch which was often far from where I lived, and wait in line to sign a bunch of paperwork at a desk

Every rental agency I've rented with has had pickup service of some sort (in the last few years, usually Uber/Lyft ordered by the rental office), and because they are smaller footprint and have business driven by accessibility, they tend to be more conveniently located for more people than dealerships.

Is it really a thing? I also heard this from other people, but it's hard for me to believe that CC company will really pay out in case of an insurance case. After all, their commission for renting a car is 2-3%, and car rent companies charge 50-100% of the rental price for insurance.

Somehow they turn a profit on renting you a car for $80/day which I imagine is less than a tax takes in for fares per day.

This is much more than the cost to the consumer of renting the car. How can they possibly defend it?

Why wouldn't the rental car company charge it?

Worst case, it's going to lose 2 hours on a 1+ day rental, right?

That doesn't take into account whether or not you have your own insurance (e.g. if you already have a car). It also doesn't take into account taxes. IIRC, Multinomah County (the county where Portland, Oregon is) has a 15% tax on rental vehicles. This is on top of the Enterprise quoted price. I don't know if ZipCar works this into their costs, but I don't remember ever seeing this tax on an invoice from ZipCar.

I've had good experience from a customer service perspective with Enterprise, but from a cost perspective, not so much. I once rented a car for a day from them which was supposed to be ~$60. The final cost with insurance, taxes, etc was over $100. On the other hand -- as a ZipCar member -- I can rent a ZipCar for ~$69/day and that includes gas.

I was able to sign up for $25 (+ $10 for my wife) by signing up at the Portland Gay Pride 'celebration' (I would say 'Gay Pride Parade,' but it was at the tents after the parade). We've also been able to get free credits when we see their booths at other events (e.g. VegFest '09). I've also gotten free credits for calling them to tell them that I saw the lights were left on on one of their cars (I was at a bus stop that was near a ZipCar spot).

While I have no complaints about Enterprise customer service, I would say that ZipCar is the Zappos of car rental (though I may be wrong since I've never interacted with Zappos; I'm only guessing based on all the stories I hear).

No that’s the worst case scenario.

> you have to navigate high pressure tactics on buying upgrades, fuel, insurance, etc.

No you don’t. In the US, the major reputable companies allow you to register your DL and insurance, pick your default fuel preference. 20 minutes prior the reservation you get a list of available cars and proceed directly to the car. You then scan a QR code at the exit, maybe you show your DL to a guy at the gate, who is in no position to sell anything. This is for almost all airport locations and many corporate locations.

Even when you see an agent.. High pressure tactics? That’s impossible, they have no leverage. It’s not like buying a hot new car or something. The insurance is usually worthless to you so you aren’t losing anything by walking away. Just say no? A simple no always works. Carry a credit card with primary rental insurance. I have had a sales person try to give some bullshit song and dance even when I politely tell them I have primary insurance on my card. It’s a simple “no, not interested.” What are they going to do?

Most rental car coverage only lasts 30 days maximum (sometimes it’s even less). It’s unlikely that carrying rental car coverage does anything in practice when netted against the increase in your premiums and in light of the limited coverage plus the discounted rental rates insurance companies get from rental car companies. I would imagine your car insurance provider is ecstatic that you pay an extra $X amount a year to “stick it to them.”

There are some car clubs in the city I live in. You sign up in advance, give them your details/card, and use an app to book the car. They're scattered all over the city, and you book it by the hour and pay for mileage. You get a fuel card, and are asked not to leave it back empty. If you pick one up empty, fill it up, and tell the app and they'll nag the previous person about it (but I only had to do this once in the 2 years I used it). It's great!

When I signed up at first it was great, there were 5 cars within 1/2 a mile of me. 2 years later, there were still 5 cars within 1/2 a mile of me, but the number of people using the service had increased so there was no availability on a weekend.

On my current street there's ~100 cars parked on it, and at least 10 of them haven't moved in the last week (my own included). If we replaced (even) half of those cars with for-hire cars, it would be a perfectly usable system for me.

> 1. I already paid for my car, so I use it kind of for free, except gas.

If you're not using your car for work, then this doesn't apply really. Even assuming you own it outright, maintenance/checks/cleaning/washing my current car are in the region of 30-40 bucks a month.

Irish car rental agencies have found the way around this, which is that, if you have valid insurance other than theirs, they'll happily rent to you, so long as you're content to have a significant portion of the car's entire value charged (not preauthorized, as much as they say that's what they're doing) to your credit card and refunded upon return.

But can a rental that is simultaneously trying to undercut the incumbents on price while exceeding them in service? That's a harder question.

It seems like the big innovation this service is offering is (aside, presumably, from the standard startup initial subsidy of investor cash funding artificially low prices to build position) is leveraging a short-term market fluctuation that leaves dealers with unusual sunk unsaleable inventory costs that are, in effect, subsidizing the rentals from money that the dealer was going to lose anyway, but those go away if either sales pick up or dealers adjust to the new normal of sales levels.

Why do car rental companies have such a problem with this? I haven't rented a car in 5 years, but I rented a bunch in the 5 years before that. I don't think even once I was actually able to get the car I reserved, they are always out. There's even a joke from the '90s in Seinfeld about this.

Why are car rentals so much worse than other industries with reservations? Rarely would this happen at a restaurant or a hotel. Only cars seem to have this problem.

(I also find airports to be the WORST possible environment for this kind of thing; you’re always rushing to return your car so you can catch your flight. You are forced to just accept that the scratch on the back left bumper wasn’t there when you rented the car, because fighting about it will cause you to miss your flight. So it’s a $500+ repair fee or a $500+ plane ticket. They have you over a barrel.)

Is this some American thing? Every time I rented a car in Germany, I had to pre-pay at least some amount.

I've never had such an insurance pitch. They usually pitch a “damage waiver” gap insurance which assures that any amount not covered by your insurances deductible is covered.

> I also find airports to be the WORST possible environment for this kind of thing; you’re always rushing to return your car so you can catch your flight. You are forced to just accept that the scratch on the back left bumper wasn’t there when you rented the car, because fighting about it will cause you to miss your flight.

Never had that experience either, everytime I've rented at a major chain we've done a damage walkaround at pickup, often the rental agency employee has noted things I would have missed, and on return (even at airports!) there's never been a problem.

Of course, I've never been so late back to the airport with a rental that pointing out that the damage was identified on the pre-rental walk-around would jeopardize my flight, either.

That’s if your insurance is covering it right? My Volvo C30 got rear-ended a few years back and it took about 6 weeks to get all the parts in and get the repair done. The insurer of the at-fault driver covered my rental car the entire time.

Car rental companies are notorious for deploying high pressure sales tactics to bully customers into paying for damage waiver or insurance upgrades. I’ve heard of companies basing bonuses for employees on these conversions and I’ve also heard of companies that just have a hard and fast quota with policies like “you need to get this many upsells per unit time or you are automatically fired”.

The fee structure and legalese for rental cars is often customer hostile for the purpose of scaring people into paying for upgrades they don’t need — and in many cases very large categories of risk are excluded from coverage via tricky language ...

I rented from a company called goldcar in Spain recently. Their rental prices are insanely low (paid 30 euro for a car for 3 weeks). They seem to make money entirely on the extras and the float of your excess deposit. They charge you your excess in full when you pick up the car (1200 euro for the car I had) then refund you when you return minus any damages. I’ve rented from them a few times and they do some shadey things which I’ve learned to be careful about.

- They have a range of constantly changing and sometimes screwy refueling policies: buy the tank in advance return empty, “flex fuel” where you pay a (non-refundable!) fee to pay a deposit on the tank and then get refunded your deposit based on how much fuel is in the tank when you return it, and (only sometimes and seemingly at a different rental rate) buy full return full. - Once they charged my card in dollars rather than euros (without asking) resulting in a huge 5% currency conversion fee by their payment processor - I can’t imagine that fee doesn’t make it back to them in some amount ... (that really pissed me off and I probably wouldn’t ever have rented from them again but I actually didn’t notice this until much later)

I think they’ve gotten dinged in the past for some illegal/deceptive practices. I personally have mostly come our ahead using them — but only by being careful and knowing exactly what to say/do on each rental experience ... I think from recent rental experiences it has gotten less scammy for me.

The mentality necessary to navigate rental car insurance decision making seems the same mindset required to engage in business with other insurance entities - most insurance markets generally seem ripe to me for similar adversarial game playing ...