car2go

I’ve been using Car2Go here and there for about two years since I sold my car. This service, Metro, and Enterprise CarShare have convinced me it’s time to buy a car again!
One of the mos infuriating things is that they no longer have gas cards and Car2Go staff supposedly fills up the tanks themselves. I guess they no longer wanted to give people 15 free minutes of driving in exchange for filling the tank. If it’s close to empty, you can fill it up yourself and email them the receipt of some such nonsense to get reimbursed. The temps were in the low teens, so I didn’t want to stand in the blistering cold and fill up the tank myself. The last three times I’ve used it, the tank has been close to E and once the fuel light was flashing. Clearly Car2Go isn’t filling the cars up.
Also, several times when parking the car, the dashboard monitor states I“m out of the zone — even though I’m not in one of Car2Go’s designated no parking zones. This has caused a lot of hassle because I’ve had to drive around and find another place to park, racking up more minutes.
As others have said, it’s probably easier to just use Über or Lyft.

Not worth it, unless you are familiar with smart cars and are able to waive the registration fee. Car2go smart cars are extremely unreliable; I’ve tried to use one 3 times and out of those 3 times, it only worked the first time. When it does work, the brake is extremely jerky, making it difficult to parallel park (basically the only parking available in DC…). Also, the in-​car GPS system totally blows, after inputting the correct address it somehow took us a mile away from our actual destination, plus the trip ended up costing pretty much the same as what Über/​Lyft would have been, and we wouldn’t have had the hassle of trying to find parking.
The next time I tried taking a car2go, the emergency brake was stuck, so we gave up and walked instead. The final time, the gas pedal wasn’t working and the car would only roll backwards (we were on a slight incline).
It takes forever to get in touch with the customer service, but at least when I finally got through they did refund me for the rides. Car2go would be great if the cars actually worked? Not sure if I’m just unlucky or I’m doing something completely wrong. Personally it’s not worth the chance & hassle of failure for me and I won’t be using this service again.

I tested Car2Go for a month while I waited for insurance and the police to sort out my stolen vehicle. The experience was amazing at first. Then, it became clear that this company has some alarming problems.
I used Car2Go for an entire month. During this time the company was having problems with their financial system, causing them to not charge me for an entire month (they are supposed to charge you as soon as you end the trip) and then suddenly charge an epically long series of small transactions, one after another for the past week. It’s incredibly difficult to keep track of and has apparently resulted in declined charges from my bank (according to Car2Go — my bank account balance tells a different story), which in turn resulted in Car2Go locking my account.
So, my month of living without a car ended with a bang. I can’t tell how much more I owe them because their system shows me as delinquent for charges that have definitely cleared my checking account.
So, I can’t really say whether I will use Car2Go again. I enjoyed the flexibility that Car2Go offers, but the experience with their financial mess has been highly annoying.

While a strong offering to the share-​economy, Car2Go falters when trying to achieve most of its modest goals. Other than being marginally cheaper than competing ride services, it is almost always a better option to use Lyft or Über to get you where you need to be.
Their smart cars’ availability are unpredictable at best and unobtainable at worst. Given that a car is in-​fact near enough at the time it is actually needed, it’s not uncommon to experience connection issues, leaving you standing on the road waiting for some magic to occur; swiping and waiting, and swiping, and swiping, and pressing, and swiping, ad infinitum.
If able to best the aforementioned unreliability, the pricing isn’t terrible (cheaper than a bus for a very-​short trip; cheaper than an über for a reasonably short drive (~2.5−3.5 miles)). That being said, parking can be a nightmare in-​city, with restricted zones and an ever-​present risk of a parking ticket or tow (either that will be yours to pay). Further, while full accident liability may lie with the corporation, a hefty $ 1000 deductible is the operator’s to pay.
Assuming one has managed to rent a car2go, pilot it safely to their destination in a reasonable amount of time, and secure parking, the system will quiet often have disconnect issues leaving you stuck waiting and waiting for your ride to end, or to be asked to move the vehicle and try for another trip disconnect. TO MAKE THINGS EVEN MORE EXCITING occasionally the in-​dash screen and voice will inform the operator that their trip has been successfully ended, when it is fact has not! Fun! In the event that occurs, one can look forward to hours and hours (16+ for myself) of charged time ($ 95, again, for the author) that will take weeks (over 6) to have «resolved» by customer service. «Resolved», because months later (FOUR MONTHS LATER) that charge may accidentally be processed through another system error, gifting many socially-​inept hours of customer-​service-​lacking conversations leading to a potential refund with no regards to your own needs (a week so far with no refund; today being told a «system bug» has all refunds on hold, so that they cannot give me any expectation of when it will arrive).
Their cars are unreliable, their customer service is lacking, they do not care about their clients, and you take on much risk for the little reward of dollars to cents saved over other ride services. Again, take any other option such as Über, Lyft, Flywheel, hailing a taxi, riding a bike, hopping a bus, ferry, or train, or even walking uphill in the snow over exposing yourself to a tiny gokart with full-​size headaches.

Car2Go was a great option when my options included Zipcar (rental that must be booked in advance and vehicle returned to place from where it was rented), regular rental cars, and taxis apart from the bus. The website and phone apps seem increasingly unreliable as they show cars in locations that I book and more than 3 times have been unable to find withing a 1-​block radius in any direction. The cars that have been changed to only allow unlocking by phone app force me to wait with a slow app, likely due to my phone’s 1-​yr old technology, but which I don’t want to upgrade just so that I can unlock my carshare. The last time I was unable to unlock my car, I called for help and was on hold over 10 min until I abandoned my car reservation and took another mode of transportation. I have switched to almost solely use Evo Car Share. I love it! Cars are always where the app/​website says they will be; I can unlock with app or member card, but either work 100% of the time and the app doesn’t crash on my phone. Cars are spacious and comfortable hybrids with all the luxuries of satellite radio, heated seats, fold-​down back seats and trunk space, with roof racks on top of the car. I attempted to use Car2Go this week when they gave me promotional 40hrs free after I haven’t used them for months, but when I showed up to an unlock-​by-​app-​only car and was on hold for 10min when the app kept freezing on my phone, I abandoned my reservation to take an Evo car instead. Car2Go would be more acceptable with its unreliability and clumsy app access if there weren’t other options, but Evo is a great service I use 1 – 3 times per week that hasn’t let me down!

I’m so done with this service. I haven’t had a single trip in the past three weeks that hasn’t had some sort of issue. Then you sit on hold for ten minutes (and counting), paying for a trip that won’t end because THEY have a connection issue. Nice concept, ridiculously laughable execution.

I’m in the same boat as another reviewer — I was a very early adopter of car2go and LOVED the fact that I could take one-​way trips, park the car in almost any legal spot, and didn’t have to refuel the car. At first I had some issues with not being able to end a rental in a legal spot, but those got better with time. I was even a «Pro» member at one point, which was supposed to be a member rewards kind of program and entitle me to some deals around town, but I only ever saw like one promotion, which I wasn’t really interested in, and then haven’t seen anything about the program since. I used to joke to friends that car2go should be paying me for all the promotion I did for them — I effusively recommended the service to everyone I talked to about it.
Things have definitely gone down hill since I first signed up those several years ago. I am lucky to not have experienced the ticketing/​towing issues others have mentioned (not yet at least! we’ll see!), but I constantly have problems with cars that can’t connect to the… server (??? I dunno) so it takes me a long time and/​or one or more phone calls to customer service to start or end a rental. Recently I left an item in a car and ended up standing outside the car, looking longingly through the window right at it, on the phone with a customer service rep who tried for OVER AN HOUR to simply unlock the doors and let me in – I didn’t even want to start a rental! Nothing she did worked, I couldn’t get into the car, and multiple times I’ve followed up with car2go about my lost item, I have heard nothing back. Well, not nothing — I tweeted to the car2godc account and they promised — twice — that someone would email me about it. No one ever did.
I’ve never used Über, but my friend says the prices are comparable to car2go. Same probably goes for Lyft. Anyway, even if there weren’t similarly priced alternatives available to the car-​less, I can no longer in good conscience recommend car2go. Which is sad, because I used to talk them up like my family owned the business.

It pains me to leave such a low review for car2go, since I was an early adopter and have encouraged several friends with cars to sign-​up to get around town (it’s admittedly more convenient than worrying about parking). Amazingly, as other services (Über) have improved, car2go has failed to keep up. Much like other commenters, I’ve had my share of frustrations with parking fines, including several hundred dollars for parking in a spot several times in one week that had no indication it was no parking. I swallowed those fees since there was no appeals process (I had legit photos and correspondence from DC Parking Services to back my claim. In fact, they would have dropped the charges if the car had been mine or if car2go had petitioned on my behalf), chalking the experience up to learning. **As a note, if you park someplace and the car gets towed, you won’t have any idea until you’re billed weeks after the fact. As preventative measure, never park in the same place twice… just in case.
My breaking point today has a lot to do with their misleading pricing indicated on their website and through email marketing. Last night was the first time I used car2go for an extended trip with a stopover. I read through the pricing of 14.99 per hour max, with a daily max of 84.99. By my calculations on the number of hours I was using the car to drive to National Harbor to meet a friend for dinner, the cost would be less than a.) renting a car through budget/​avis/​dollar, etc. and b.) taking an Über. Today I was shocked to find out that I was charged a few dollars shy of the full daily max for a 4 hour trip. I’m a reasonable guy, so I called and asked why this was the case. It was explained to me (yes, I forgot to calculate tax, and didn’t realize that there were weird thresholds for a full hour that make for some weird math). So I ask if I can pick get in a car2go today since I paid for the full 24 hours, and just like the last time I forked over a chunk of change to this company, it was explained to me that it was my fault for not understanding the vague rules. Even though I paid for a full day use, I cannot use a car again without additional charge and there is no flexibility on a possible account credit, for what the even the customer service person agreed was a situation that made no sense. In essence, I paid the same amount for a car for ¹⁄₆ of the time used.
So my advice is this: next time you feel like taking a car2go, just take an über. Even with 50% surge pricing, it will likely be exponentially cheaper than using car2go. Or use Zipcar so you at least don’t have to drive in a wobbly two door death trap.

Such a great idea! Such poor customer service! In theory there is an office on Rhode Island Ave, but don’t count on it being staffed. After I discovered that someone had left a bag filled with valuables in a car I rented, and after the 24 hour «help desk» said that their policy was to try and hide valuables in the car so that the owner could retrieve them if/​when they discovered their loss, I went to the office on Rhode Island to leave the valuables there… Opened :30 minutes late. No good deed goes unpunished? Thanks Car 2 Go!

Great idea — and so far I’ve had a good experience. If you have a Capital BikeShare membership — you can get a good referral from them to Car2Go and get a good offer (I think I got 30 minutes of free Car2Go time). I hope this system expands!

It was great while it lasted.
Car2go charges tickets back to customers, which is fine if you’ve parked illegally. If you HAVEN’T, however, too bad. You don’t get notified for months and your chance to appeal is non-​existent. I have appealed all my personal parking tickets and have had all but one overturned. No chance of this with Car2go. And since DC parking authority isn’t terribly good about accuracy of tickets, you pretty much pay for whatever they write.
I quit my membership in protest.

Easy to use. You can locate a car easily using the app. I like that I can get the car at point A and leave it at point B. No need to return to original spot.
I use a mix of services — Über, Car2Go and Enterprise-​Carshare. I use Car2Go when I want to make a short trip. i don’t want to return the car to my original point and I like that I am not responsible for fuel or parking. And you can easily say that the car was clean or dirty with the smiley face.
Much better than Enterprise Carshare that charged me $ 25 for low fuel. I didn’t realize that I was responsible for refilling the tank :-\ Seems absurd. Especially since I barely drove 15 minutes each way.
Über has its place in the mix of car services available to those of us who don’t want to invest in a car.

USE ZipCar. I WOULD GIVE THIS SHAM OF A BUSINESS ZERO STARS IF I COULD. Please read my e-​mail to them below. And don’t expect them to answer the phone, we shall see if they even bother to return my e-​mail.
–
Dear Car2Go,
Today was my first and LAST Car2Go experience. After successfully getting into a vehicle and arriving at my destination, the car I was in refused to allow me to park ANYWHERE. It had nothing to do with the fact that I was not allowed to park due to restrictions, but rather the car could not connect to whatever BS server you are using to operate your excuse for a business.
After driving around for 30 additional minutes, trying 5 different parking spots, all of which had no restrictions (including the one I even picked up the car from), I called you not once, not twice, but THREE separate times, to which I waited on hold for over 10 minutes each time, and of course no one answered the phone– I was forwarded to some arbitrary voicemail. How can you run a legitimate business, especially a car-​share business and have NO ONE ANSWERING THE PHONE? What if, god forbid, someone were to actually have a car accident in one of your vehicles? And then they are told to leave a message? ARE YOU SERIOUS? HOW DO YOU RUN A BUSINESS THIS WAY?
You can bet every cent you have that I will be disputing all of the charges from you with my credit card company AND filing a report with the Better Business Bureau. You have wasted my time, money and patience. I will also be posting my experience on Unilocal,TripAdvisor, and any other ratings website, because consumers deserve to know about your sad and pathetic business practices.
I will never ever be using your service again, and will do whatever it takes to be sure no one else who I know ever does either.
Sincerely,
A now exclusive user of ZipCar

Back up a start because Car2Go did actually improve their technology. You can now do many of the things that I previously complained you could not. You can also now start and end your rental without the membership card. Pretty nifty.
That said, it’s still a niche service for me. Any rental longer than 10 – 12 minutes is way too expensive. $ 15 plus tax for a 40 minute rental in a car that can’t haul more than 1 passenger and a small amount of stuff? No thank you.
The other problem is that fellow Car2Go-​ers have far too little respect for their fellow drivers. I’ve stepped into one too many cars with someone’s McDonald’s garbage or apple core lying on floor. Disgusting.
Overall, I use this maybe once a month. But meh, it’s hard to get excited about.

Great concept and idea! I use this fairly regularly. It is a very «you get what you pay for» approach. Everything is cheap. The GPS is slow, the cars don’t have a smooth drive, etc. However, you’re paying it by the minute and it’s supposed to be cheap!
The cars have gas in them, are clean and start with no problems. Parking wise, you can always fit them somewhere.
If you want something quick and easy, go with Car2Go. If you want something better (smooth ride, plenty of space, etc) use ZipCar or Hertz.

Great idea, but worst service ever.
At first, I thought it was a great car sharing company. Over time, it went from 5 stars to one star for a few reasons. Whenever I check into a Car2Go vehicle, most of the time, the windshield would be really dirty. If the drivers cannot see the road with the sunset glaring in their eyes, it is asking for an accident. The company needs to improve on getting their cars cleaned more often. At this point, I was going to rate this 3 stars.
About 3 weeks ago, I updated my account on their website with my new credit card info. After the change, I noticed they are still charging to my old account and at the same time charging some to my new credit card. I wrote them several emails about it, finally got a reply 13 days ago. I responded to that email and have not heard from them since. When I saw that they charged rides to my new credit card, I thought it was safe to use Car2Go. Nope, I was wrong. I checked my banking accounts against the Car2Go statements and I could only match at least 75% of the transactions. The other 25% I have no idea where the money was taken from because the dollar amounts are different. They kept charging to my old account again. I wrote another email 5 days ago and they still have not replied.
They need to make their statements consistent with the use of debit/​credit cards. Saying they have my new credit card info on file, but my old bank is still getting charged. Know what? I will be calling my bank and report it stolen to prevent Car2Go from adding bogus charges.
The lack of communication and inconsistency is why this company is getting 1 star. If zero stars were possible, I would have given them a .5 star! Only .5 star because their company exists. If they had another competitior which runs very similar, then I would have given this 0 stars.
On top of that, Über is 33% cheaper than Car2Go. I would know, because after getting fucked over and ignored by Car2Go one too many times with my money, I personally tested Über and compared both services’ prices last weekend. Not only that Über is cheaper, their service is much more prompt and on-​their-​toes when it comes to communicating with their consumers.
Car2Go needs to step up their game.

Car2go is a not a company that values its customers. The only reason they haven’t been driven out of the market yet is that they don’t have any direct competitors. I hope this changes soon. I signed up for it because I needed a car for one-​way trips, but didn’t want to pay for a cab all the time.
In the six months I’ve been using the service, I’ve encountered the following issues:
–many faulty card readers outside the car, so I couldn’t start a reservation at a vehicle I’d reserved
–problems parking within the home area because the car couldn’t connect to the server
–having to drive in multiple cars without working safety bags (!!!), because you can’t see issues like that until after you start driving
–regular 10+ minute wait times to talk to an uninterested customer service representative when having trouble ending my trip (yes, I was billed for this time)
–numerous billing issues, one of which took a month to resolve
–a very poorly designed website that doesn’t even have a mobile version
Their customer service is awful. It’s so bad that sometimes you decide to accept overcharges incurred by their faulty technology just so you don’t have to deal with their customer service.
I also am a member of ZipCar, an absolutely wonderful service that (unfortunately) hasn’t been able to replace car2go for me just yet. With ZipCar, I can start and end my trip in seconds. On the rare occasion when I need to contact their customer service, I can get a human on the phone in 2 minutes tops, and they’re always a joy to talk to. Their representatives are cheerful and helpful — plus, they actually seem to like the company they represent. And the only time I’ve ever been billed extra, the situation was resolved within minutes over the phone. ZipCar has a dedicated maintenance team (as car2go should), that makes sure the cars are all safe to drive. Car2go should be taking notes here.
This company will not last unless they invest a lot more in their customers. As it stands now, I can’t wait to leave.

Great idea. Horrible execution.
I have never had a good experience with this service. It makes every other car sharing service look good. The only good thing about car2go is that you don’t have to return the car to a «home» location like you have to with other car sharing services. But that is the ONLY good thing about car2go.
As several other reviewers have noted, this service has many problems, not the least of which is that their system is virtually unusable. IF you can get into a car, which is a BIG if because their communications system is sub-​par, you can waste precious minutes, for which you are charged, to report any damage or problems with the car. They do not deduct those minutes from your rental. They do not let you know that the damage has already been reported by another driver.
Once you get to your destination and park the car and log out, it takes like three different steps to actually check the car in, which may also be impossible because their communication system is sub-​par. So you may be charged even though you ended your rental on the system inside the car. If you don’t swipe your card when you leave and it doesn’t go through to the main system, you will be charged for all of that time. Don’t even bother trying to use it if you’re in a rush to get anywhere. Be sure to ALWAYS check your account to make sure you are not charged for time after you ended your rental. You have to be vigilant.
If you happen to get caught parked in some no parking zone because street parking signs are unintelligible, or you park in a rush hour zone on a Saturday, and the car doesn’t move and is ticketed on Monday, tough luck. You won’t know for *months* that you got a ticket, you will not be able to contest the ticket, and now you will have to pay car2go a hefty fee on top of the fine, that you can’t contest.
Oh, and for all of the free minutes that you can get, don’t expect them to let you know when those minutes expire. They do expire, but they don’t send you any sort of reminder that your minutes are going to expire. I’ve had more minutes expire than I have actually used all because I was never informed that they expire or when they expire.
For all of the hassles, and for the price, you are better off taking a cab or an Über or basically any other mode of transportation in DC than using car2go. Nice try, but better luck next time.

Having a car in DC is a hassle, so naturally Car2Go seemed like a great option.
Pros:
— Lots of Smart Cars all around the DC area.
— The Car2Go app is fairly accurate on where the cars are, so you can reserve them with a few clicks.
— Easy to park. If you can’t parallel park with a Smart Car, give up your license and stay off the road.
— Surprisingly good speakers, even though the small space has something to do with it.
Cons:
— The GPS inside these Smart Cars is terrible. It has a tough time rerouting when you hit construction, bad traffic or made a wrong turn.
— There’s no dash area to mount a GPS of your own, except the windshield.
— It can get pricey, considering getting anywhere in DC is a hike.
I don’t use Car2Go as often now that Über and other options are increasingly available. Zip cars are also more convenient since they typically have parking spots and different size cars available. But since traffic and parking won’t get better in DC, I’m glad Car2Go is an option.

Car2go is proving to be a colossal waste of time and heartache — I am one mistake away from canceling my membership and ensuring my review/​tips go on every website available.
The latest gaffe? I walk 10 minutes to find the only Car2go in the Adams Morgan area. Not something to whinge about, buuuuut the fact that I’ve managed to find the third car that will not respond and communicate (in as many rentals) is demonstrating to me that their network is immature and unfit for mass consumption.
The service center was inept as usual — flaccid and unable to even communicate with their own fleet to make things work. Lock it up, Car2go, you’re on display and the only thing showing is your rear end.
No, I don’t want excuses (the cell tower not connecting while I’m using a cell phone to call your service center DESTROYS your credibility), I don’t want free minutes (your cars don’t even work so how would I use them?!), and I don’t want your overused apologies.
I want your service to work. Plain and simple.
If you can’t do that, do us all a favor and pack up you fleet of matchbox cars and relieve our already congested road and parking situation in the city. I could have gotten to my destination faster tonight by bike sharing. Oh yes, I said it.
You get ONE more chance…