That's all fine and good if the service works, but after 3 tries I have been unable to even step foot in the vehicle. To the company's credit, the customer service has been fantastic. I think they just have a few little kinks in their system to work out.
I got up extra early for work to catch my first Car 2 Go, last Thursday morning. I checked the website and it turned out there was a Car 2 Go right behind my house! I walked over there with a cup of coffee in my hand, thinking "I'm good. I got plentya' time." When I got to the car I swiped my card and I looked at the screen. "Reserved" with a blinking red light. Ok. That sucks. I didn't know that you had to reserve a car 15 minutes in advance, to make sure you could use it. In fact, I didn't even know about that feature of the website. A co-worker late explained it to me.
OK, fair enough. My fault. In the time that it had taken me to walk one block behind my house, someone had reserved the car, since the website doesn't show reserved cars apparently. Fine. Whatever. I go back to my house to find another car. This time when I arrive at the car, a few blocks further and in the rain, it was "available." Sweet! I swipe my card. Nothing. "Card Suspended" or something analogous flashed before my eyes, "call service center." Ugh. Whatever. I call the number on the back of my card, starting to stress over getting to work on time. I reach a very jolly chap, from The Netherlands, who was nice enough to check on my account. However, he doesn't have any answers as to why my card was suspended. He tells me to call the Austin office at 9:00 a.m., 30 minutes after I'm supposed to be at work.
The Austin service center calls me at 9:30 a.m.! A very friendly person tells me that the Car 2 Go I scanned my card into the very first time thought that I was renting it, and that's why it locked my card when I tried to swipe the second Car 2 Go, even though the first one was reserved...
um...ok...
So she told me to just "watch out for that." Fine. Whatever. They reimbursed me for the time the vehicle was rented.
This morning I thought I'd try it once again. Every new system has a few hiccups when it's first implemented. So, I find myself a Car 2 Go and reserve it online, which took a little doing as a first time user.
When I got to the car and swiped my card, "Card Suspended." I threw a little hissy fit. I called Car 2 Go at 9:30 a.m. A very warm and comforting person assured me "that was weird," and that he would reset my account, and reimburse me for the reservation expiration fee, which I didn't know about until he told me.
When you enter the vehicle for the first time on a rental you have to enter your password. Luckily, I asked if my online password was the same as my Car 2 Go rental password...
...it's not.
