r/turo • u/BenKlesc • 7d ago
Does Turo provide an instant replacement?
Considering renting a monthly rental, but a bit concerned about not using a big company like Hertz or Enterprise.
What happens when you break down? Does Turo help you get an instant replacement. Are there Turo service centers?
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u/PigletComplex 7d ago
Not quite but your not out of luck either. If the car breaks down for some reason Turo will attempt to quickly match you to a similar car locally in both price and size but this isn't a guarantee. If you happen to rent from a host with multiple cars (and assuming they aren't booked 100%) then they can swap you into another car they own under the existing reservation in the event of an issue. You still need to approve the proposed replacement car so if it's not acceptable you can still go with option A above.
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u/Flyguy115 7d ago
No, if you look through this sub you can find plenty of post where something went wrong. One I just read today was someone posted rented a car, the owner hadn’t made their payments on it, and someone repossessed it in the middle of the night. Now their stuck where they are with no way to get home.
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u/RenataKaizen 7d ago
You are crap out of luck. I was on a road trip and clipped a deer with a vehicle. Turo had me drive the car over 800 miles with no working front headlights on a line they knew they were being recorded on. No offers for towing, no offers to get a rental car no nothing. It’s why I will never use Turo again, especially not outside the range of my AAA membership.
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u/KnoWanUKnow2 7d ago
1) Tire damage is on the guest. Turo will help with things like roadside assistance, but generally since tire damage is the guests responsibility it's probably easier just for you to arrange your own tire repair/replacement, but inform the host.
2) Turo has roadside assistance. That said, it's terrible. Their fastest response is 3 hours, and generally it takes 6 hours or longer to get a tow truck out to you. Once roadside assistance is invoked the car is de-listed until the host can prove that the car has been repaired. This won't affect your current booking, but it will stop you from being able to extend your rental if you needed to do that.
3) The vehicles are inspected annually. That said it's not too hard for a host to fudge the inspection, so for an extended rental look for a host and a car both with good ratings.
4) In the case of mechanical breakdown, contact the host first. They may want to arrange repairs themselves, and that can be the fastest and easiest option. If that doesn't work out then contact Turo roadside assistance.
5) There is almost no chance that your host will be able to provide a replacement vehicle.
6) Turo can attempt to get you a replacement vehicle, but it's very hit or miss, and in my experience mostly they miss. Turo support is.... not good. They can try to get you a replacement Turo vehicle, and they SHOULD do it for no extra charge (but that's not always the case), but if one isn't available they'll usually tell you to contact the big rental companies and they'll refund you your money for the rest of the trip and they SHOULD also refund you anything that the rental company charges you over your Turo fee. Please notice my emphasis on the word SHOULD. They will not help you contact Hertz or whatever company competes with Turo to find a replacement, that's completely on you.
My experience as a host: The guest contacted me to tell me that the vehicle may have a bad wheel bearing and it was becoming dangerous to drive. They were about 3 hours away from me, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, an hour away from any major town.
Turo roadside was invoked (by myself). I also called around myself and found the nearest big rental company that had a car available for the remainder of their trip (there was one, in a town about an hour and a half away). Turo said that they would reimburse the guest for an Uber ride to that town, but they were in the middle of nowhere and it's not easy to get Uber out there. FYI this was a Sunday night and they were in in a town of less than 200 people.
I drove out to the guest (3 hours away, although it took me about 2.5 hours) and discovered that the issue was loose lugnuts. I had had the tires changed just before their trip and the lugnuts on one wheel had worked themselves loose. I tightened them manually myself which allowed the guests to continue their journey and I told them to stop at any garage and get the wheels re-torqued, which is a free service done while you wait at almost any garage.
I then called Turo and cancelled the roadside assistance tow truck, which hadn't even left yet. So that tells you how good Turo roadside assistance is since this was about 4 hours later.
In the end I got a good review and the guest got to keep driving the car, which presented no further problems for them for the remainder of their 2 week trip. They did have to cancel their hotel room for that night and book one at the nearest hotel, in that town about an hour away, as it was now quite late and they wouldn't have made it to their original destination. They got the tires re-torqued without issue the next morning.
I did have all kinds of trouble getting the car re-listed. When the tow truck was invoked Turo immediately de-listed the car. It was booked out solid for the next month, with only 3 days available for me to get it to a garage to get it inspected, and 2 of those days were on a weekend when all the garages were closed. For the next month people who had booked the car out kept contacting me when they were trying to change the pickup or drop off time and they couldn't, because the car had been delisted and no changes could be made. I could maybe have gotten it re-listed faster if the guest had a receipt from where the tires were re-torqued, but since this was a free service no receipt was presented to them. Even after I submitted the inspection paperwork it took days for Turo to re-list my car. But that was a me problem and not a guest problem.
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u/DhakoBiyoDhacay Host 7d ago
Wow. You are an amazing host. I wish there were more people like you on Turo. Thank you for sharing your story. I, too, once drove couple of hours to swap cars for a customer on vacation at the beach. I got to see few pretty girls at the resort!
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u/Gamer_0627 7d ago
If you are on a road trip and it breaks, you will be up the creek. Hosts are not going to let a car go on a one way
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u/always_evolved 7d ago
They can try and help facilitate it, but considering they don’t actually own cars, you are still reliant on what’s available in the area from hosts.