zipcar.com

Zipcar is a terrible company with fake promises.

Zipcar is a terrible company with fake promises and absurd customer service. I used their service while on a trip in LA. I reserved a car for two days. Off the bat, the car had a faulty fuel tank cover-- it didn't even close. Besides that, the car was fine. Until, whenever we were driving we would hear a loud scratchy sound, like the sound of metal scraping against the road. Obviously, it sounded unsafe, so we pulled over where we realized there was a piece of metal hanging out of the car in the front tire. We immediately called customer service to report this. They said we should be fine to keep driving it. It was either that or they wanted us to go to another far away location for a different car. Ubers are very expensive in LA and they refused to cover it to the other location. Our reservation for these two days was already over $400. We reluctantly decided to just continue with the car after their reassurance and we had one day left. The next day, the metal came out -in full- this time. The piece was full on, hanging out the side of the vehicle. At this point, there was nothing that could keep us in this unreliable vehicle any longer. We were in the middle of driving and had to pull into the closest spot. I found a spot in a random parking lot. We called to report it again. After over an hour on the phone, (all of these phone calls were extremely lengthy due to the long holds they would put us on while transferring us 20 times), they said they could tow the car. They gave us the option of another vehicle or they would pay for up to two Uber trips. We chose the Uber trips because we are on a trip! We had places to be at certain times and this Zipcar situation had taken away soooo much time already. We simply did not have time to get to another vehicle. Zipcar told us to leave the vehicle behind and it would get towed. We Ubered to our next location. Our trip was repeatedly interrupted by Zipcar's unreliable and dangerous vehicle. We are so lucky that we were not on the freeway when the metal popped out because it could've ended very differently. I do not trust Zipcar. I will not ever use their service again nor recommend them to anyone I know. We felt unsafe in a vehicle that clearly hadn't undergone a basic safety/ maintenence check. To this day, Zipcar has refused to refund the Uber trips they promised or refund my trip, period. I paid over $400 for a two-day Zipcar reservation and only used the car for one day. I spent around $100 in the two Ubers and Zipcar decided to ignore my emails for months. LITERALY MONTHS. The trip was in the beggining of April. Immediately after we returned home, I emailed and called customer support about the situation, requesting a refund for the dangerous vehicle I paid for and the promised Uber refunds. They would send back emails where they ignored the real questions and would send back filler responses. I provided endless details and photos of the evident damage. They still asked for me to fill out an incident report and had the AUDACITY to threaten me with being charged for the damage to the car if I didn't fill out the report. Absolutely rediculous. I filled out their form, and they responded with some BS about how they would send this to their team for review and they refunded any membership charges to my account while this was ongoing. Absolute filler. There weren't any membership charges to my account anyways, they were just trying to seem like they were doing somehting. After they sent that, I had to ask AGAIN, 'What about my refund?? What about the Ubers? What about my actual questions?'. This is when Zipcar stopped responding. That was in May. It is now August. They never responded or followed up. I decided to call them a few days ago and was once again left with a "We'll escalate this to our team for further review". Today, I was emailed that they will not refund anything. I am absolutely done with this company. Don't ever use their service. Terrible. Ruined my trip and wasted $500 of my hard-earned money.

Date of experience: Apr 01, 2023