Living in Manhattan, I also figured they'd be great for shopping at Ikea or the upcoming Costco on the East Side, or just general trips around the city when I'd rather not take a cab or for those times when I want to take my family on a trip out of the city.
There are four players in the NYC market:
- ZIPCAR (zipcar.com)
- Genius Ride (geniusride.com)
- Mint (drivemint.com)
- ConnectByHertz (connectbyhertz.com)
Genius Ride offers some nice features, mainly a driver will deliver the car to you, but unlike ZipCar and Hertz,
Gasoline is not included in the rates. We suggest returning the vehicle with a full tank, as an additional charge will apply otherwise.
and
Drivers must posses a clean driver's license, valid for a least three years.
ZipCar, the grandfather of the four, also requires its members to
have been licensed for at least one year
That leaves ConnectByHertz and Mint. More on Mint later, but first I signed up with Hertz
ConnectByHertz charges a $25 application fee along with a $50 annual membership fee. They advertise rates as low as $10 an hour during the week / $12 on the weekends. Using the coupon code of "ZEWEB" which waives the first year membership fee of $50 and gives me a $50 one time driving credit, I signed up and was emailed a membership confirmation the next day.
Mint will allow you to sign up for free if you visit their corporate office or email a scan or fax them a copy of your carshare membership card from another provider. So for $25 I'll be able to sign up for both Mint and Hertz. Mint also has an inconvenient sliding scale of cost, depending on the size of car rented, the day of the week, and the time of day. Blah! But their rates are the lowest of the four. Once I get my free membership, I'll rent a car and let you know how it went.
I figured for my fist test run, I'd rent a car from Hertz for three hours, giving me enough time to drive for two hours with time to spare to return the car.
The ConnectByHertz site doesn't have a way to review your membership details. You can review your current bookings but I wonder if I'll be able to view my historical details as well? Then at the end of the year I could see how often I've used them and see if it's worth paying $50 for the following year's membership. Also their site is awful slow!
To book a car you select the pick-up and return dates and times.
Next you're given a map of sites where there are cars available. You can filter by car but I'd prefer a sortable grid, allowing me to select by neighborhood and sort by car or price.
Now comes the catch. Selecting three hours over the weekend should come out to $36 but instead the price varies by the make of the car. Maybe I'm being naive since I've never rented a car before (and yes I know when you rent a car you pay different rates depending upon what you book), but when a service is advertised as $12 an hour, I was surprised to see the BMW Mini costing $50.34 for three hours!
Looked at another way, say you want to go to shopping at Ikea and decide to rent the Volvo C30 for six hours (2 hours commuting, three hours shopping, one hour to drop off your purchases). According the the ConnectByHertz webstite, my shopping excursion would cost me $86.31 which is almost as much as Ikea would charge for delivery - but still no bargain.
I guess it's still cheaper when you factor in the cost of the subway, tips to the delivery men, and the convenience of same day delivery on top of skipping the long delivery sign-up queue at Ikea, but net it's still costing you close to $100. It might be cheaper to hail a cab, that is if you can find one in Red Hook.
And that's where these services kind of fail. With the exception of possibly Genius Ride, they all require you to return the car back at the garage you picked them up, net a round trip. Therefore you have to factor in not only the time spent commuting but also the time away and the drive back.
For most trips around the city, taking a taxi is a better bargain than renting an hourly car. A trip from the Upper West Side to the Lower East Side to drop off some things will in a ca cost you around $25 but using ConnectByHertz you could wind up spending $50 or more. That said, if you were planning on taking a cab round trip, depending on the distance and time spent away an hourly rental may make more sense, that is if you can find parking.
I'm hoping to rent out my first ConnectByHertz this weekend and will sign up with Mint next.