Magazine for the professional car and truck rental industry.
Hertz On Demand vehicles at a Park Ridge, N.J. location. The service, which has no member- ship fees or annual re- newal fees, was formerly known as Connect by Hertz prior to July 2011.
PHOTO BY ADREYGRV, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
his car in 2004. Like DeOnier, Grummere's wife has a vehicle. Grummere is a painter and has an offi ce at home, so he reserves a Honda Element to move his paintings to galleries. He also used a pickup truck when he moved in with his wife and uses a hybrid or a small se- dan when driving his daughter around.
Access and Availability T ough general vehicle availability doesn't seem to be an issue, on weekends and holi- days — and for on-campus locations, fi nals week — access can become strained. "I wish there were more cars available, especially dur- ing fi nals week," Kimbell says.
King remembers how last-minute her res- ervations were when she fi rst started. "But now that it's becoming more popular I have to think about if I want to rent on the week- end — especially the weekend," she says, ad- mitting that now she is sometimes forced to walk a few more blocks to get a car. However, Grummere says he oſt en makes
last-minute reservations, noting that he has even reserved a car fi ve minutes before he wanted to use it because he has "diffi culty planning in advance."
While the three non-campus users cite
T anksgiving as the most diffi cult holiday to fi nd a car, they say that as long as they plan ahead, they can usually get a vehicle. T ey also agree that for trips longer than a couple days they would go through a traditional car rental company instead.
Late Fees and Parking T ough all users say this happens rarely, re-
turning a vehicle late — and the fee that comes with it — is bound to happen. Depending on the situation, some companies will not charge a late fee if no one has reserved the vehicle immediately following, or if the user is able to extend the reservation. "In the past year, I have only had one instance in which some- one booked right aſt er me so I had to hurry up and get home," DeOnier says. King says she constantly ran into the prob- lem of not reserving enough time when she fi rst started using the service, and so she tends to add an hour cushion on her reservation times. If she gets back early, she will fi ll up the tank for the next user.
Hertz On Demand users can extend the reservation by turning a dial in the car in fi ve- minute increments, while the next user will get an alert saying that the car is no longer avail- able. "But every time that's happened, they've upgraded me for free to a nicer car, so I really don't have any complaints about that," says Hammerle, though she was once switched to a vehicle in New York City, "which was a little inconvenient." She called customer service and was switched into a closer car immediately. What happens when you go to your re- served car to fi nd an empty parking space? DeOnier says that when this happened to him, he called Zipcar and the company found the nearest available car and gave him two free hours of driving credit. Another issue for car-sharing users isn't with the service itself, but general parking woes from urban dwellers. King says she has had a few incidents in which someone else parked in the dedicated Zipcar space. She says that police are "really good" in ticketing people, but otherwise Zipcar advises you to park in the nearest open spot, which can create confu- sion for the next user. "It just depends on how good the instructions were from the person
before about where they leſt the car," she says. Hammerle has been in about "a half dozen" situations where there was no nearby parking space, so Hertz paid for her to park and then compensated her for a taxi to get home. She says the situation is improving.
Is Vehicle Ownership Off the Table? Before he got married, Grummere was only using PhillyCarShare, his bicycle and public transit. He found, though, that his demand for a car was getting to be too much, and if his wife didn't have a vehicle, he probably would've needed to buy one. He says if you fi nd your- self using a car-sharing service daily, then the cost might not actually be worth it. "It makes total sense to be used as a secondary car," he says. "And they (PhillyCarShare) promote it for that purpose anyway."
Rodriguez hopes to use a car-sharing service
aſt er college, but if the option isn't available, he says he's glad to have had the opportuni- ty to drive various vehicles before becoming a car owner, including electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. "Aſt er driving an electric car, I'm open to them and understand they are the wave of the future," he says. "Economically, I could go out and buy an- other vehicle right now, but I choose not to because I like the fl exibility of driving diff er- ent vehicles," DeOnier says. "At this time I would defi nitely increase my Zipcar use in- stead of buying another vehicle." Hammerle is about to move into a new apartment that includes a parking space. "I'm not even going to buy a car; I'm go- ing to rent my parking spot out and con- tinue to use Hertz On Demand because it's much more valuable to me," she says, add- ing that she can make more money on the parking space than what she pays a month for car sharing.
MARCH / APRIL 2012 • ARN 19
PHOTO BY ANDREYGRV, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
