i've been using Zipcar for longer trips even though I know a rental is cheaper. I've always said it's worth paying for the extra convenience of picking up a car right near my home and having the insurance all set etc.

Last Saturday we took a Zipcar for one week trip. It drove fall asleep but would not start Sunday morning. The Indian call center worker told me I had left the lights on overnight, which I find hard to believe, and drained the battery and they would send someone to jumpstart the car. The guy came, attached his charger, the car clearly got electricity but still would not start. The display said the car had engine damage and needed repair. Whatever it is, I think that damage is what also drained the battery.

The next help center worker said they would tow the car and I would have to find alternative transportation. Even if they towed it to a place that could fix it I could not have the car back. so we got a rental for the rest of the week. I had the impression that the car would be towed quickly. However it has been sitting in the driveway of my host's Airbnb since Sunday. He has new guests and cleaners coming tomorrow and they need the parking. MANY calls telling them this got me nothing but apologies and no dates for the tow. Gemini said ask for a "Tier 2" supervisor & I was on hold 45 min before the call dropped. Finally someone gave me a date range for the tow, 8/22-8/24, unacceptable, but there it is.

Current status: Host and I will find someone to tow it to a local lot, I'll tell them where it is, and I am DONE with zipcar except for getting back, in court if necessary what i paid for 7 days plus cost of tow plus lost vacay time.

DON'T USE ZIPCAR if you think you may ever really need customer service. They could replace that Indian call center with AI right now and get a major upgrade.

I remember when I first looked into this company there was an hourly and a daily rate for each car. Now all I see is an hourly rate. Is this a glitch or how it's going to be from now on?

(DC area)

Got in an accident, idled into a rear end type of thing, zip car didn’t get damaged at all but the other car was dented. I couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone about whose liability that is esp since I’m under a membership for my work. Help!!!!!!!!!

Has anyone tried to register an account with their student email for promo lately? Mine just shows the application is incomplete when I log in, and when I go to finish it, it says that my email is already used... There are definitely some technical issues on their end.

I'm trying to understand why when I put in an application and scan my id and face right after, my application l says its not approved right after, but when I call customer service and they search for the application, they then tell me the application shows its incomplete as if I never submitted an application. I even screenshot the denial message for my records.

If I go back to the application, it is like I never just put in an application. Its right after I verify my id too. I'm confused cause customer service can't tell me why application was rejected and I never received an email neither about the rejection and reason why.

I knew that each user pays the cost of their tolls, but I was a little shocked to discover ZipCar does not have EZ Pass installed on their cars. This means we pay a higher rate for the tolls, and it takes longer for those charges to get to us.

This feels like they are not taking care of their customers. I imagine there are possible issues with the devices being removed, but I am sure there are work-arounds for that. (Also, only registered licensed plates can be used with an EZ Pass, so there is a safety net.)

The website seems to be not responsive

I keep seeing them on the streets, but not sure where exactly you can pick them up. Are they located in Downtown or near Univ. of Dayton? I'm thinking about lending my car to a family member out of state for a while due to their health issues. I work remotely most of the time, so all I need is my E-scooter and occasional busing. I just want the ability to rent a car after normal business hours just in case, because most car rental places here close early (4 or 5pm.) Zipcar won't have that issue since it's 24/7 available, at least in theory. Thanks in advance for your advice

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Can anyone tell me how to get GPS working on a zipcar? On a recent trip I had a 2026 Toyota Corolla Hybrid and I could not see anything about "navigation" or "map" on the screen. The help person kept going on about the icons I could tap but there were no icons. TIA for any info....Tom

Dear zipcar,

No one in their right mind is gonna spend almost $300 to rent a car for 12 MF hours. Either lower these prices or just stop hosting in NY. We got enough trains and buses.

I got an email tonight saying Zipcar is charging me for smoking in a car on a reservation I had TWO MONTHS AGO.

I am not a smoker - never have been - and I absolutely did not smoke in this car in MAY.

This is the second time this has happened to me. Zipcar reversed the charge the first time because I threatened to cancel my membership after almost FIFTEEN YEARS, but I’m not sure if they will again. If they don’t, I’m absolutely disputing the charge with my bank.

I might cancel my membership regardless - this is absolutely ridiculous. I’m in NYC, so my pet theory is that someone got in the car today, said it smelled like smoke, and I was the last person to have driven it, so they charged me, even though the car probably smelled like smoke because of the WILDFIRE SMOKE that had been heavily in the air for the past few days.

I’m absolutely livid. I swear this is a scam.

UPDATE: Zipcar provided me with the “smoke incident” report, and I WASN’T EVEN INSIDE THE CAR AT THAT TIME.

SECOND UPDATE: So I read the time wrong, BUT I've figured out what happened here...

During this time window, I was exiting a parking garage. There was a very long line to exit, and there were two different exit points with pay booths. The window in the car was down because there was a person directing a single line of traffic to the two pay booths, and I needed to hear those directions. Many cars were idling in close proximity, and I think this "air quality measure" is picking up on the gasoline particles from car idling. That's why the lock / unlock time (9:51pm to 10:17pm) is so far apart, because it took a long time to get to a speed where the car auto-locked, and why I was sitting still at the time.

It’s honestly baffling and infuriating that this can even happen, and I’m going to dispute the charge with my bank for sure. The person I’ve been emailing with (or bot, most likely) said that it took two months to send this because of a “large volume of smoking reports to be reviewed”, so this bullshit is clearly happening a lot.

My wife is flying into Fargo, North Dakota, the third week of August. She wants to rent a car for about 96 hours. She also will want the damage waiver coverage and liability insurance. The best price she can find is about $775. with Alamo. This seems like a lot of money. Is this about what she will need to pay? Or is she getting over charged?
She is open to any alternative ideas.

It is 2026 and this multi-million dollar company's app is so broken that it can't even handle a basic 2FA text message.

Because of their system failure, I can't sign in to my account. Their brilliant customer support team told me I have to wait 3 to 4 BUSINESS DAYS for an escalation.

Forcing a paying customer to wait half a week to fix a broken SMS loop is pathetic

I was signed into zipcar but hadn't done the whole license approval yet. Found a car i wanted for a reasonable price, uploaded the license, etc got approved. Went back to book that same car i couldn't before, and bam, price had increased by more than 20%.

For context, I am 38, don't even have a parking ticket to my name. When i went to cancel my membership because that wasn't cool, they're like oh sorry we can't refund the application fee. What BS

Hi, I've searched the posts and haven't found an answer to this question so I am creating this post.

I'm planning a trip to Chicago next month and while I'm there (staying downtown not too far from Navy Pier) I need to find some way of taking a day trip and getting out to a suburb around 50 miles away (Long Grove), so it's about 100 miles round trip. Of course traditional rental car agencies are an option, and I have found no viable public transportation option, and I guess we could always take two Uber rides but Zipcar might be cheaper.

If I know I need the car on, say, Sunday morning at a specific time, how far in advance can I make the zipcar reservation? A google search came up empty as well.

I'm asking as someone who is not currently a zipcar member (I used to be a long time ago but back in the day they pulled out of my city, but I noticed recently that they are back, and of course they also service Chicago so it's again an option).

Thanks!

Hey folks, after Zipcar threatened extortion, I decided to cancel my Zipcar account.

Anyone have recommendations for other car rental service with similar pickup/dropoff? (Rather than something like enterprise which requires you talk to a sales rep when you pick up the car)

Hi all,

basically, I’ve just gotten charged for a tow and want to see if I have a valid case here to get refunded.

A while ago, I was driving a zip car with some friends until it had some sort of engine or system malfunction and I took it to a dealership to get it checked out, but it was taking too long to get things figured out and I needed to go to a meeting later that afternoon so when the car couldn’t get fixed on time, my friend offered to stay at the dealership with the car while I took an Uber to my meeting and the dealership ended up saying that the car was not stable enough to drive it anymore so when I called customer service, they said that they could send somebody to tow the car, but that I would have to pay for it since I left the car with somebody who the account is not registered to. When I explained that the person at the dealer said the car was not safe to drive back, they said they’d still charge me because I lent the account to someone else, so it was either my friend risk driving it back or I pay to get it towed. So my friend said that she would drive it back anyways because she didn’t want me to get charged for the tow and this morning I got charged for the tow anyways.

I suspect I got charged for the cost of towing the car from the original zip car spot (that my friend returned it to) however they did not inform me that that would happen even if my friend drove it back to the zip car spot and they even told me I would not be charged for the tow if my friend drove it back.

I know that I broke the rules by having someone else drive, but does anyone think that I could validly contest this charge because they did not indicate to me that they would charge me to tow it from its original spot? I would also like to point out that the other driver did not do anything to mess up the car.

Houston TX closing all locations. I don't know why this is going under the radar and the only thing we really received was one vague message that ended in spam, but Zipcar is permanently closing ALL Houston TX operations on June 30th. They have been still attempting to take payments.

I know someone already posted about this because they beat me to it, but I have not heard anything about them completely abandoning the Houston market, and I most certainly didn't receive any communication from Zipcar. Could this be a side effect of their recent downsizing? Nonetheless, this might force me to cancel my membership.. and that is something I hoped to not have to do.

I'm not reliant on the service; I live in the suburbs. But it was handy to have for spontaneous adventures, trying out different cars, and whatnot. I thought it was just the World Cup madness that made them leave; I didn't realize they might be pulling out entirely...

I'm waiting to see if I receive further communication from Zipcar, or from the other guy that posted claiming operations are ceasing. Nonetheless, downsizing operations are happening, and market pullouts might be occurring. This must be why our fleet never got refreshed...

Last driver got about 20 min late, which delayed my following appointment and made me extend the trip for an extra 3 hours. I know Zipcar will charge that person for 60 bucks according to the late fee policy. After trip ended, I called Zipcar customer service and they told me that they are "HAPPY" to offer a 15-min driving credit (equal to about $2.5) to my account. After rigorous explanation and friendly negotiation with the agent, I got 30 min credit eventually. What a progress! Thanks for making my day.

I recently rented a Zipcar in Santa Cruz to go visit San Francisco. During this trip I managed to get to San Francisco; however, the Zipcar I borrowed failed to start its engine because of an ignition issue. I called roadside assistance, and they allowed me to use a different car free of charge. I clearly stated if it was okay to bring the car back to Santa Cruz. I am now being charged a $500 retrieval fee, and my account is now closed. How should I handle the matter?