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When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

theatlantic.com

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Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#111

Post by greedo »

jacquesm wrote: post #77
2rsf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, the ban sounds justified to me based on the story above I agree, knowingly (and after a few occurrences you should understand there's a problem) damaging the service should lead to a ban or at least a warning.

No, it should lead to someone fixing the problem. The customer centric thinking in this thread is amazing.

One facet of the problem (the cell coverage) is largely out of Zipcars control, no? I suppose they could add some functionality to their app so that you're alerted when you park at a location without cell coverage?

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#112

Post by loriverkutya »

aloknnikhil wrote: post #41

Zipcar also has a dumb system in-place where you need to use the card first to start the reservation following which you're allowed to use the app to lock/unlock the car. The whole point of using the app is so that I don't have to carry a physical card with me.

Based on my experience, this is not true, I could always open the car via the application.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#113

Post by jb3689 »

Anthony-G wrote: post #90

A lot of comments are focussing on a Zipcar not starting due to insufficient battery power. However, that’s only one aspect of the article (a personal anecdote of the writer). The other scenarios highlighted the key take-away from the piece: > But the problem with using services dependent on a network is that you are then dependent on the network. This – for me – is the main problem with IoT devices, e.g., many priva…

> many privacy issues would go away if devices were designed to operate without needing to regularly “phone home”

This is the sole reason why I do not buy IoT devices. I would love to have a resource which lists devices that do not try to contact the manufacturer over the internet

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#115

Post by jellicle »

fenomas wrote: post #52
dx034 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the ban sounds justified to me. If you know that parking in the garage will lead to a 50% probability of them having to tow the car, repeating this is just unnecessary. It would obviously be better if they could handle such scenarios but ignoring a known limitation to incur cost to others (since you have no advantage as you also can't use the car in this scenario) sounds wrong to me.

> If you know that parking in the garage will lead to a 50% probability of.. 50% is GP's after-the-fact description of how often the car failed to start. It's not an actual failure rate that GP knew about before they parked.

Anyone can make an error once. Commenter talks about how they repeatedly parked the car in an underground garage that they knew had no cell signal, despite multiple towings being required.

What's the appropriate number of towings for one customer due to that customer's intentional actions before you kick them off the service?

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#116

Post by oh_sigh »

Nextgrid wrote: post #108
oh_sigh wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't internet of shit though...is an iPhone shitty if you can't use cell services when you don't have cell service?

It’s obvious that a phone won’t work without signal. It’s not (yet - and hopefully will never be) obvious that a car rental service requires cell signal to function. If this limitation can’t be worked around and they still decide to go ahead with operating the service then they should advertise this limitation prominently. Until then, the customer should be compensated (your rental car letting you stranded is definit…

I can see maybe it not being obvious to a random member of the public. Maybe they thought their card somehow had all the data it needed. But I guess I just expected more from someone who posts on hacker news.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#117

Post by squeaky-clean »

rebuilder wrote: post #42
seltzered_ wrote: post #33

Friend in Seattle had this experience when trying to use a zipcar truck out of a garage while moving (i.e. Limited time window to get stuff out of one area to another). Ended up calling support, dealing with multiple hours of delays. Despite the issues which has led him to avoid Zipcar these days, he uses ReachNow (now defunct) and car2go (now called ShareNow) regularly and AFAIK ReachNow didn't have these limitation…

I haven't used any of the services you mention, but an on-line rental service I have used has a simple system: they unlock the car remotely when you start your rental, and the key is in the glove compartment. You may run into issues starting your rental, but lack of connectivity won't stand you in the middle of nowhere. Is there a particular reason these services can't just leave the keys in the car? Theft?

ZipCar has keys in the car and it's part of the service rules that the key CANNOT LEAVE THE CAR. I have no idea if they use rfid or something to check, but I felt it was really clear in their "how to use" videos that the keys never leave the car, you can can get banned from ZipCar.

So while there are keys in the car that you could have held onto to use during a cell service outage, you're told to never remove them from the vehicle.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#118

Post by squeaky-clean »

Marsymars wrote: post #97
paggle wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US the keys that are in the car are physically tied to the car with a string. You are expected to use the card to lock and unlock during your reservation

Wow, if I came across that without some prominent warnings, I'd probably assume some kind of key setup mistake and cut the string.

I use a zipcar occasionally and this is exactly what happens when I'm driving with a friend. Once they actually did manage to yank on and snap the string. They said something like "Wow, the previous driver tied the keys to the center console, what an asshole" pull, snap

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#119

Post by [deleted] »

pmontra wrote: post #80
isostatic wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the car has no signal, how is it unlocked?

Good question, but if there is no signal how could the previous driver have locked the car? Similar services I'm using don't let me end the rental if there is no signal, simply because either the car or the shop on my phone can't talk with the server.

[deleted]
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