September 1, 2007
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Irony
A while back, when I finally dragged myself up out of a depressive week or so, to resume work on the van, I had a bright idea: Rent a car to go get supplies and stuff. And you know what the best rental option turned out to be?
Flexcar is like a subscription-based car rental service. They have cars stashed all over the city, and you reserve one, and then go hop in and drive it. They have your credit card on record, so the billing happens automatically. They do the insurance and there's a credit card for gas in the car.
You pay $35 yearly, and if you do two rentals, they waive the fee for the next year. Then it's something like 10 or 12 bux an hour, or 70-90 per day, but that includes gas and insurance, and it's a pretty good deal.
So I was looking for a way to rent a car and go get the free steel rim and buy the breaker bar (and do some grocery shopping, and other assorted stuff I needed to do at the time). So I signed up for Flexcar. Paid my $35. My assumption was that I'd be able to reserve a car that day, show up, and enter a code in a keypad or something.
But no. The way it works is that you wave an RFID card over a sensor in the windshield. Which means you have to have the card to wave, which means you have to wait for them to send it to you, which means it's bad news that after I signed up, they informed me that it could take up to two weeks to get the card.
Argh.
So now that I've fixed my van, the card came. And given the van's reliability, I'm going to be hanging on to the card. I'm also trying to find the nearest Mini Cooper they've got for rent.
Comments (3)
i'd like to drive the mini!
I've seen something like that in Manhattan. It's called zipcar. It's a really interesting idea.
your term 'irony' may be a touch generous to an outfit whose leaden ad-copy folks 'neglected' to mention the catch for a new client who needs the wheels yesterday. Of course that gives them time to check details, which is certainly their right, however, (and not yet having checked the site) I wager that the impression given is one of immediate service. I do like the idea of impersonalizing cars.. you just hop into the closest one, drive it home, park, and hope your neighbor needs it tomorrow. Ok, the logistics need to be ironied-out, haha
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