Getaround

Aside from the cars being unsafe for driving as I'm seeing in a lot of these other reviews. Last Thanksgiving I rented a car from them, they told me that I had caused some sort of damage to the car and they were automatically going to charge me over $500. I didn't make any damages to any vehicle, i did everything that i was supposed to do the proper way and somehow they still TRIED TO CHARGE MY CARD WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. This was LAST YEAR 2019. Fast forward today when I get an email about them trying to take the payment off of my card again even though my account has been suspended for a year and they didn't do any investigations on my end to make sure that I didn't cause the damage. Any call that i got was trying to apprehend money that I didn't have and wasn't going to give them. PLEASE use another app. Please don't get scammed like i have. Treat yourself better and do your research. One google search could have told me before i had allowed them to use me. They were going to send this to collections, they were about to FALSELY ruin my credit for years, while we are in a global pandemic. PLEASE don't use GetAround

DO NOT USE. If 0 stars was an option, I'd give it. This is the worst car service I have ever used. I have had terrible experience more than 3 times now. The first time, I had to go to more than 3 cars and wait over 90 minutes to find out that none of them were working meaning I missed a friend's birthday lunch and had to abandon the cars and go back later. I then went back later to find it still wasn't working and wait another 30 minutes before I had any luck and by that point missed another commitment which cost me over £80. I was then charge in FULL for the service even though it took 4 cars, over 2 hours of wasted time and lost money on other experiences.

The second time I was charged a ridiculous admin fee which came to over £100 on top of the money already spent on the car.

The third time, reviews of the car from other customers had stated there was a warning light that came on every time the car started and the response from getaround/the owner was that they had fixed it. They hadn't. Not only that, but the car stank of weed and I was charged close to an extra £300 for congestion charge, which was not stated that it had to be paid in anywhere obvious on the site and considering the collection point was in central London, you'd assume it was sorted, as well as another fine for supposedly driving the wrong way which was a £30 fine yet the whole fee came to £100 as getaround charge a ludicrous amount for admin which is disgusting. This all happened despite me emailing prior to the fines about the state of the car which I was pretty annoyed about given this was the third time I'd had a bad experience with getaround.

I am absolutely livid that I have spent any money with this company, let alone being charged an extra £400+ and losing over £100 on missing experiences due to the poor service from this app.

I never write reviews but this has annoyed me beyond belief. I have emailed asking for advice and help on the situation and the response has been rubbish and not good enough. Do not use. Use Turo instead.

Do not rent a car from Getaround and don't host a car from Getaround. You will be sorry. No customer service number to call.

They collect WAY TOO MUCH information: your contact lists with telephone numbers, email addresses etc. No... thank... you

I've had one car for rent on Getaround for 4 months and a second car for 3, and although the money is good when everything is fine, I've had so many problems that it's not even worth it -- everything from people smoking marijuana in the car to STEALING IT. Even though there's a GPS tracker/ignition blocker in the car, it's easy to remove, so once someone realizes your car is a Getaround car, they'll just break a window, unplug the tracker, and use your keys (which are IN the car) to drive away. Luckily the police found the car a few days later, but if they hadn't I'd be screwed, and Getaround did nothing because it didn't happen during a reservation. Now my other car is waiting to be fixed after a renter got into an accident, and I've been waiting almost a MONTH for Getaround to approve the repair estimate, with absolutely ZERO communication from them. JUST STAY AWAY. The money seems good at first, but people are $#*!ty and Getaround's customer service is even $#*!tier. YOUR CAR WILL GET TRASHED AND THEY WILL DO NOTHING -- IT'S NOT WORTH IT.

DO NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY!
I was very pleased to learn I could share my car with an automated system, because during the past 18 years (I have been in car sharing systems for that long) I have been sharing personally handing over the keys and explaining, which took quite some time. Someone always had to be home when the car was fetched, stressing on my personal life, but I was and am a big fan of carsharing.
Getaround promises you that there won't be any hassle and they claim to have a very trustworthy system when it comes to checking potential renters.
First of all: about 3 out of 10 people driving your car are NOT the people who have rented it and given their details. On one occasion, the 18 year old daughter of a Getaround member took our car on a week long holiday in Spain. She wasn't allowed to be part of the system due to her young age, so her father became a member in order to make it possible for her to have a car.It happened on many occasions that someone other than the Getaround member fetched our car.
And then: the so-called "Getaround connect box"Getaround promises you there will be no hassle. People can fetch your car, kilometers will be read automatically, as will the level of fuel. After about two months, the connect box stopped functioning correctly, giving wrong numbers on the fuel level. This resulted in us having to pay for fuel at an exaggeratedly high price, 50 cents over regular prices at the pump, despite the fact that we had fueled up the car to 100%. Not only did we pay for fuel, we now had to pay again for it. When I contacted Getaround, they claimed the connect box was working correctly. When I sent them proof it wasn't, they refused to reimburse me the amount I had been charged incorrectly. Since about a week, they even don't reply to my emails anymore.

Absolutely horrible experience.

I rented a vehicle and needed to extend my rental time. I was working for uber and paid for a 2 hr. Extention. After the 2 hrs I still was not done.
Getaround took it upon themselves to cut off my engine and wouldn't turn it back on unless I paid $16.00.
I wasn't able to cash out from Uber, there was technical problems that ubers I T dept was working on.
This merciless fake company sent a tow truck to pick up the car. Never let me know they were coming. They left me 25 miles from home stranded on the streets at 1am. The Tow truck guy felt so bad for ne he out of his own pocket gave ne $40 to try to get home.
The next day I was billed as such:
$197.00- Refueling cost
$200.00 cleaning cost
& $197.00 towing cost
Total= a whopping $594
I spent the next 2 days talking to 14 different company reps. Not one single rep could solve the problem. Imagine telling this situation to 14 people. All either transferring to another dept or promising that they will take care of this.
I used the last of my savings to jump start my new full time job with uber. It's been over 2 months every day my credit card is charged $200 197 $200 even though I froze the card They still try to charge it every single day I have text messages let me know from my banking Institution that once again this company has tried to charge over $500 worth of bogus charges any reputable rental place would never have done with this company did sad thing is this is a third party sitting under the umbrella of uber ripping people off needless to say I never received my $200 and the charges are still on going what kind of company does this type of business with people honestly being a third party is good for rip off companies like this because nobody takes the blame don't ever use this company you are in a high bracket of losing money I never received any type of apology letter for leaving me stranded on the streets at 1:00 in the morning these rental companies and Uber and all the companies that declare safety to leave an employee stranded on the streets at 1:00 in the morning 25 miles from home is not the way to do business stay away from this company
They deserve Zero Stars!

Updated review on 8/30/22 - After several communications with Getaround and seemingly getting nowhere, I received an email from Celine at Getaround customer service saying since my experience with Getaround was less than stellar, Getaround will refund all charges for the July 29th car rental. These refunds showed up in my account today 8/30.
Will I use Getaround again? - possibly but carefully if I am in Portland again.

On July 29th in Portland Oregon I contracted with Getaround to rent a 2011 Toyota Corolla from someone named Daniel. My son and I walked to Ladd Street and picked up the car to travel to the west coast. The car soon refused to travel up the hills. The engine bucked heavily and one time stalled on a sharper incline. We decided to turn around and did not make it all the way back. I found a parking lot and called Getaround to come get Daniel's car. Getaround charged me for the rental, the gas refill and the tow back to Daniel's location. The following is what I wrote to Getaround when they asked "How did we do?

Daniel's 2011 Camry failed about half way through the trip it was rented for. I turned the car around and before it failed completely, I parked it in a convenient parking lot. I called Getaround to to report the location of Daniel's defective car. Getaround dispatched a tow truck. I took an Uber back home at my expense.
- Daniel's car was poorly maintained and failed on the trip but Getaround insists on charging me to rent it?
- Daniel's defective car was not drivable to a gas station but Getaround wants me to pay for the replacement gas?
- Daniel's defective car was not drivable but Getaround wants me to pay to have it towed back to Daniel?

The car was in poor condition and not suitable for renting out. The rental fee, the refueling fee and the towing fee are not my responsibility. These fees are either to be absorbed by Getaround or charged to Daniel.

Tim McGuire
8/17/2022

Getaround was my go-to car rental service for a while now. I've used it in California and Illinois. Unfortunately, I will no longer be using their service moving forward. For a company that has it's own "customer happiness" team it was a surprise when I found out that customer happiness was not a priority for them. Without going into detail about my entire experience during my most recent, and last trip with them, all I will say is their true colors really showed.

Here are a few items that you may run into and to be aware of:

-when I informed the team that the car I booked had issues from the start of the trip, I was told: Getaround is not responsible for issues like this and the owner of the car may not have had time to get the issue addressed due to trips happening one after the other. (Meaning customer safety, due to mechanical issues is not as important as renting out the car so they can all get paid.)

-When the agents I was able to talk to were not able to support me and I asked to speak with a supervisor or someone else, I was informed that the best they could do is email my issue to their team and I would be responded to within 7 days. (Yes, this would really help me when my issue is taking place in the moment.)

-After my trip I waited over two weeks to speak to someone. In reality I think the only reason I actually heard back from Getaround was because I reached out to the BBB as an intermediary to help resolve my issue. (Keep in mind, my goal was not to spread negative/false information about the company. I simply wanted to speak to someone.)

-Each time I contacted Getaround to describe an issue during my trip I had to describe my issue again and again because no one ever took proper notes of my previous call or issue. Even when I finally spoke to the team lead two weeks later, I had to once again describe my entire experience because her notes were limited. And even though they stated that they were looking into my situation prior to speaking to me, the team lead, Patricia, said that after our call she would be conducting research.

I've always been that customer that says I may be able to overlook bad customer service because this will be a quick experience. But it's when you least expect that you'll need something that you find you need it most. So just keep in mind if you decide to use Getaround their customer happiness team may not isn't really concerned with your happiness.

Firstly, we had no idea this could even happen. Much, much, less that it has happened to so many other customers.

We live in DTLA and choose to commute by bike. When we need a car to pick up some boxes from our storage unit then we will rent a Getaround for a few hours. The distance from our apartment to the storage unit is 1.5 miles, a 4 min drive according to Google.

On Nov. 13th my husband rented the Getaround for 3.5 hours. Solely to go to the storage unit then to our apartment. He took pictures before and after. Nothing was unusual or wrong with the car. He returned the car. Uneventful. We didn't give anything a second thought.

On Nov. 19th Getaround emails my husband saying that because AFTER he returned the car, the "check engine light" turned on that they will be charging us $1700 for damages (including $200 for not reporting damages).

We disputed this obviously. They want "proof" that we did not cause the "check engine light", but how?

If there was nothing wrong when we had the car, drove the car no more than 5 miles total in less than 3.5 hours. Why would we ever think to take video or extra photos of a car that was seemingly fine. Furthermore, any car owner can attest to the fact that the "check engine light" can turn on for a myriad of different reasons at no specific time and disappear then reappear 2 weeks or more later. We never used the car excessively or got into an accident or caused any damage. If the "check engine light" turned on after the car was returned then it sounds like the owner needs to do the necessary maintenance to their car so that it can be in optimal working order to be rented.

Getaround provided no proof to us that we in fact caused the light to turn on. They charged our credit card the $1700 and said there was nothing we could do about it. We have disputed and will continue to dispute this. We also called our credit card company and they are investigating.

Link to the reddit where I see this nightmare scam has happened to other earnest users -- https://www.reddit.com/r/GetAround/comments/jovbpc/getaround_is_a_scam/

Has this happened to you? Any lawyers out there who want to help look into this bait and switch scam Getaround is running? Email me, *******@gmail.com