Sunday, February 17, 2008

No more Flexcars, and no Zipcars either

Wow. Uhh. It seems I'm out of luck for the plan I'd had to reserve a Flexcar for today. Well, yeah, sure, they're converting to Zipcar cars. OK, that's fine, I'll reserve it as a Zipcar. And if the car nearest me is unavailable, that's fine, I'll just reserve a different one. But no. No zipcars available either. I called customer support, figuring there was some sort of error, only to be told that no, no Zipcars would be available until the 21st.

What? No cars available until the 21st?

I'd distinctly had the impression that the impact of this transition was supposed to be minimal. I had speculated (OK, I know, it's then "my" error) that they'd do a rolling transition. But I hadn't really cared how they did it, exactly, so long as I'd be able to at least get some sort of car at some point.

I should have known better, when I noticed on the reservation site two days ago that all cars were becoming unavailable at 7pm yesterday.

It seems I'm not alone. Others are out there with the same problem.

No manager was available when I talked with Zipcar's customer service, so I left my name and number and was told one would call me back. Formally, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they may in fact make good on this SNAFU. I hope they do. Reading between the lines, you can probably guess how high my expectations are set at the moment.

More to come, one way or the other.

REQUEST:

If you have had a similar experience, please post a comment on this blog post with any other information you have (even if it's just a link to another blog post about this). I want to get a sense of how wide of a problem this is, and group together with others who are experiencing it. Thanks!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

No, I don't think it was your error. I don't think you should have known better. I'd been receiving reqular email updates from Flexcar. One week, I got an email saying my Zipcard was coming soon. Eight days later, no more Flexcars.

Sure, we could have checked the web site for news, but with the email updates, why would we?

Laura said...

Yeah this was really crappy. Flexcar said specifically that they were transitioning all the other sites to Zipcars before Seattle so that they could be sure their home town folks were well taken care of.
Apparently that plan went out the window.
I wonder if their business clients were without vehicles for almost a full week or if they managed to work something out for them?

*grumbles* I am trying to be optimistic that Zip will be a great car share company. I'm trying. :)

hk|imaging said...

Hello David,

Would you mind if I used your experience about zipcars and their transition in a feature article that I am writing about zipcars?

I'm sorry I couldn't figure out how to message you on here.

Also, I think your Photography is realy nice!

Thanks