car2go Portland

We all have this complex relationship with Car2Go. We love it when it works. We HATE it when the car isn’t where it should be, it won’t open, it won’t shut down, it’s filthy, when it’s windy since it’s about as safe as driving around in a barrel with wheels. We use it because we don’t want to pay for a full hour like Zipcar made us. We like driving to a destination and leaving the car wherever we please (within reason and the law). We’d like you to put the classical station on the presets and remove the station nobody listens to. CLEAN them once a week and enforce the no pets out of the carrier rule. Some of them smell worse than the Max and that’s saying a lot. However, the customer service (while taking a long time some days) has always been adequate. They are willing to credit peoples’ mishaps, frequently, which creates this ongoing exchange of money between customers and Car2Go by default. Whatever.

I have been a member of c2g for 3yrs now. My wife and I use it for food shopping and running errands. It’s great for ppl who don’t own a car or are in between cars. I like the fact that u can walk up to a c2g and just get in w/​out a reservation if the car is available. Yes I agree with most ppl they need to have more of them and expand the home area. Yes the c2g’s that have the bike racks on the back can be a little tricky. I usually try and get the ones w/​out the bike rack, but it usually takes some looking. Other thing I found out about the c2g’s is that they have removed the gas cards from all of their cars, so now I try and find cars that are 100% full or at least 50% full. And a c2g employee told me that u don’t want the car to go under 6% fuel or it will automatically shut off and u won’t be able to use it. Other then that they to me are a great service and continue to keep up the good work. PS I think that ur cars could use a CD player and a backup camera on the touch screen. Just a thought.

They have some kind of problem with billing. I have gone over charges and statements with them (and my bank) over and over and over again to make sure they are charging my account. For some reason, their charge bounces back and then I end up stranded because my account is locked because they have outstanding invoices when I know there’s money for the charge in my account. They unlock my account, but I am just sick of dealing with it. I meticulously went over my bill with them a couple months ago because I got a car and wanted to make sure my account was squared away before I stopped using it. Just needed to use my account today AND THERE’S OUTSTANDING INVOICES AGAIN!!! Why won’t you just take my money and stop making me hold your hand through it!!! Also I’ve been locked out of cars, they’ve allowed someone else to reserve my rental while I had it reserved, the navigation in their car NEVER works. If you have a problem and it’s urgent, you WILL be on hold for at least 15 minutes on the side of the road, service city-​wide will be unavailable with no communication to customers as to why/​how/​how long perhaps/​maybe some sort of apology since a lot of people rely on it to get to work. I’m pretty unhappy with this company.

Horrible company– they’re con artists. I downloaded the app and had it on my phone for 5 mins. After I deleted it, I got a $ 40 charge on my credit card for «registering». RIP OFF!!!

As long as they charge for how long you use the car, I won’t be a fan. Car2go drivers speed because they don’t want to pay so much and then they end up cutting people off, like just today in front of my house.

Update:
–1: Installed bike racks, but the locking mechanism is super difficult to use.
–1: Shrunk home area so it ends at SE/​NE 60^th
+1: Insurance deductible is $ 250 and costs $ 1 per ride.
+1: The car remembers my favorite radio station.

Terrible customer service. If you just plan on everything running smoothly and never run into any kind of hiccups, like forgetting something in a car, then it’s pretty great.
However the communication between the 24 hour number and the actual location is non existent. The branch workers are also lacking any customer service experience.

Poor execution and service to a great idea. I have been stranded away from home due to a frozen mobile app. I have reserved a car and the car then wouldn’t let me in. I have reserved a car and the car literally wasn’t at the spot. So I talked to customer service and they gave me free minutes to use. Later, I used the service and then they charged me. When I told them I had free minutes, they said the minutes expired. I guess their apology had an expiration.
I love the idea of Car2go. It’s really poor experience. I do not recommend.

I had a great experience with car2go when I was in town for a long weekend in Portland. A generous number of cars are always available in most of the central neighborhoods, and the parking situation they’ve set up with the city (that is: no need to pay for metered parking almost anywhere) is top-​notch.
That being said, I’m pretty sure my experience with car2go was mostly positive because I was using it as a getaround vehicle during my vacation. I’m not sure how handy it would actually be if I relied on it as my main car. There are downsides, for sure. The cars are of varying quality (in my four days there, half my cars were impeccable and the other half ranged from covered in grass and mud/​smelled like a wet dog to making a worryingly loud squealing sound everytime I braked). Getting in and out of the car using the app was a pain in the butt — sometimes my phone wouldn’t detect the car and vice versa. And their helpline is awful… expect long waiting periods, at least 15 – 20 minutes. Also, the mystery $ 1 service fee everytime you use the car evoked plenty of side-​eye from me.
But still. Two thumbs up if you’re a visitor just looking for a way to get around the city stress and hassle-​free.

Love this service for short trips around town. My only complaint is the newly instated extra $ 1 per trip «driver protection» fee. They say after 90 trips you won’t be charged this fee anymore, but that means I would have to drive 8 times a month before the fee is dropped. Unfortunately I use this service 2 – 3 times a month max and somehow this doesn’t seem as affordable as it used to. I’m disappointed in this change.

Car2Go WAS a great resource to people who are car-​free or single-​car families. However, they just shrank the Portland, OR «home area» (where you can start & end drives) significantly. They now primarily serve areas already well served by transit, leaving other areas (including my home) out of luck.
Prior to this, I would have given them 4 stars — very useful, good customer service, some problems. Now, not so much.

And then the rollbacks started.
If you look at my review history you can see some ups and downs. Now it’s down. All the way down. I haven’t recommended Car2Go to anyone in a while because they’ve demonstrated they have the same concern for their customers that a heroin dealer does, and for the same reason. So don’t get hooked, folks. These people do NOT care about you.
The network goes down, or just doesn’t work and you wait forever for a CSR to pick up. Then the most they can do is find you another car and maybe get you a small credit.
They shrink the home area to avoid adding inventory and say it’s because of user feedback. I just flat don’t believe it.
The cars themselves are rolling garbage bags in poor repair. It takes a week to get response to emails about lost and found, unclean cars, no wiper fluid and filthy windshields. And the transmissions, what the heck is that garbage.
There’s a tack on fee to every trip. I don’t even remember what the excuse for that is.
Car2Go was awesome when they were trying to suck in users. The first taste is always free, but once they get you, you’re just a fiend.

I recently became a car2go member with the intent to use it in an emergency. Like, if my child is sick at school and I need to pick her up quickly or if there is a delay with TriMet and I need to meet a client.
Since discovering that Car2Go is awesome I find myself using it if I don’t feel like walking home from work… :)
The cars are fun to drive and get me where I need to go if I’m in a hurry or its 90+ degrees outside and I just can’t bare to make my commute on foot.
I have come across one car that wouldn’t open, that was annoying, but I just moved on to the next.
I would highly recommend Car2Go to anyone looking for the occasional quicker way to get around.

Tried to report a scratch on car. Customer service does not indicate how long the wait might require. After 15 minutes, we gave up.
There needs to be federal law requiring a reasonable estimate of wait times.

This service had potential but they are a mess. They told me a $ 70 charge would be refunded since i hadnt actually used the car. Its been a month and they just keep saying someone will get back to you. I was late to work 3 times because the car wouldnt lock or end my trip which was a 20 minute phone call so i didnt get another $ 70 charge that would never be refunded. Dont use this service

Car2Go used to be awesome. But, in short, I’ve had WAY too many rental problems in the last month and I’ve received zero response to my emails. Done using the service.
Problems included issues starting rentals, the car not being able to end the rental after I park, too long waiting on hold when I call customer service, no response to three emails that I’ve sent in the past week reporting the issues.
It’s wasted my time and money, made me late, and been frustrating. I understand it is going to be an imperfect service and there will be problems from time to time, but when it gets to the point that Car2Go can’t even respond to customer issues in a timely manner, it’s bad business and it’s a waste of customer money.

Spent thousands over the last couple of years using Car2Go for business transport to clients, etc., and have just requested they close my account after so many screwups on their end it’s not even funny. The customer service is horrific, with you getting stuck on permahold when you try to call because of the many times that either the card doesn’t work, or the map lets you reserve a car in one place then it’s not there (and they tell you to go get it on the other side of town), or it won’t close out the reservation & the guy on the phone tells you to go back out in the dark neighborhood at 1am and stand by the car so he can test out 12 different ways to get the reservation ended… or my latest favorite, 4 times now in the past month the car has said that it «can’t make a connection — go park somewhere else» when you’re trying to end your reservation and when you call customer service because no matter where you move the car it won’t close, another 15 minutes passes between being on permahold and the rep verifying at least six types of info about you (even though you’re calling from the number on file) and then they want you to then be on hold for 3 – 4 more minutes while they try to locate your car even though you told them where you were, and meanwhile you’ve become late for your meeting, your dinner date, whatever commitment you had. Right now it’s been 18 hours since the reservation refused to end and while I’ve been put on permahold for so long I had to finally hang up, and I’ve emailed TWICE — once via the app’s «contact us» feature and another direct from my email account at home — still no one has responded to me. Ironically to deactivate your account, there are no instruction anywhere on the website — even searching «close my account» gets me nowhere, so I’ve emailed them a few hours ago requesting this but of course, along with not ending my reservation at 8:02pm lat night (and let me tell you, Car2Go is EXPENSIVE — Zipcar is way way cheaper), they have not bothered to respond.
For the price one pays for this service, customer support should be stellar, the cars should be connecting, the app should be accurate, and it should be a consistently safe, positive experience. I have had both a Zipcar and Car2Go account and now I’m going back to just Zipcar and good ol’ TriMet.

I just moved to Portland and had no source of transportation besides my bike, well and the bus… but the bus is scary at night and the time I spent waiting for it was ridiculous and sometimes they drive right past you and I have been so late for important things. The cab service is convenient during the week if you are trying to conserve time, but on the weekends plan on waiting for over an hour to get a ride home. The cab fare is ridiculous when trying to get to school and back, a whopping $ 12 plus a tip. School is only 3 miles away from me :-/
When I found out about car2go I was hooked right away. I signed up online and their site was very user friendly. I got my member card in the mail within three to five days just as the website stated. Downloaded the application for my iphone so I could map out where these awesome little cars were and was so pleased to find out that there were 8 in my area and one parked right across the street! :-) So convenient!
When I went to use car2go for the first time I guided me very simply when I got inside, push a 4 digit passcode, rate the car in what condition it was in at the time and then BOOM! DONE! Started the car and away I went. I got to school so quickly and knew I had just saved so much money compared to the cab fare.
I was very happy to know that I got a call and a car2go employee left a very nice message welcoming me as a new member and let me know how long I drove the car and if I had any questions feel free to call him. IT WAS THAT SIMPLE.
Overall I am excited to be a car2go member and I am glad that this will help me with my new journey in Portland. Thank you car2go!

Things I dig:
* I can use any CAR2GO I see on the street as long as it hasn’t been reserved.
* I can use the CAR2GO app on my iPhone to reserve a nearby car. It’s a pretty sweet and easy to use app.
* The CAR2GO fleet is comprised of eco-​friendly electric and super easy to park, little 2 person Smart Cars.
* I can park almost anywhere I find a parking space. The rule is for a metered parking space it has to be at least a 60 minute space.
* I pay only for the time that I am using the car and that’s it. No more being at the mercy of wily taxi drivers and their shenanigans.
Things I don’t like:
* There just are not enough cars in the fleet when and where I need one. Far too often, the cars I see on the street are already reserved. The very busy and popular downtown, NW Portland and the Pearl District need to be populated with more cars.
* While I am using the car while I am driving it, say I get stuck in some bad traffic, I am paying by the minute to sit there. It would be nice if the meter would stop if the car becomes idle for more than say, two minutes as that time can really add up.
Obviously the pros outweigh the cons for me. I would sure use it more if I could find cars nearby more often. With winter coming, I am really hoping to see a change in how the cars are distributed.
Right now, there is a promotion online going on for a free CAR2GO membership that comes with 30 minutes of free time. Even if you don’t foresee yourself using the service that often, it is nice to have it available as an alternative to taxis. Why not sign up?
2014 — Review # 87

I’ve been using car2go for about 6 weeks now, and so far I’ve had no problems. The cars have been easy to use, in great condition, and the check in and out procedure has been seamless.
My bill has been accurate with no unexpected charges.
This is a valuable and much-​needed service.
My only complaint is a function of the one-​way drive setup. It’s ideal for most trips, but results in car clustering at popular destinations and daily emptying of residential neighborhoods. I don’t really know how to fix this problem, because I’m guessing it would be costly to pay staff to scatter the cars into neighborhoods every day. Maybe give drive credits for ending the trip where cars are needed?
As-​is, car2go is great for the times all my neighbors are home. When a lot of my neighbors leave the neighborhood, the nearest car may be a mile away. I wish they had bike racks!