If I am charged a late fee for "incoveniencing" the next car user, i find it very perplexing that zipcar retains all of the "incovenience fee" rather than passing it on to the "inconvenienced" next user.

-- Anonymous, December 30, 2004

Answers

Narayan,

Late fees are charges whenever members are late. Their intent is to discourage lateness (and to encourage reserving enough time...or extending as needed), not to compensate members who may or may not be affected by the lateness. When members are inconvenienced, we often do have to take care of them...expenses related to that (a cab to another car for example) will often be assessed in addition to late charges.

Our goal is to reduce lateness...a real knock on reliability...the penalties are one method..easy extentions by phone another. We are interested in other ideas as well.

-- Anonymous, December 30, 2004

I hate to nit-pick, but one of the most annoying variables in estimating my usage time (for small errands around town) is not knowing whether there is gas in the tank. I would happily add 15 minutes to allow for re-fueling, but 30 minutes is cost prohibitive and wasteful.

Allowing quarter hour billing would: 1) Reduce estimation errors - leading to overages 2) Increase vehicle usage for small errands 3) Make me super happy

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2005

I just rented a zipcar for the first time today and I have to admit I was running behind because of the recent blizzard. IF the tank was below 1/3 I would likely have not gassed it up because of time constraints. Why should I be assessed a late fee for adding gas? I think the car wash incentive (an extra hour) should be used for the gas problem. Fill the tank and get an extra thirty minutes.

Also I realize you don't want us to use fake email addys but I have enough spam already. There should really be an obfusication program used to protect users. Actually I'll take the risk but will forward any and all spam I get on this alias (only used for zipcar) on to your administrators.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2005