Oy, what a hassle

 My letter below was to Zipcar, after a hellish afternoon!  Mostly not their fault, at all, but still a pain!

Hello, Sorry to have chosen the category I did, I wish there were an "all of the above." I just completed a reservation of a car ("Church St/Wood St / Smart Spadina" in Toronto) and have a few comments / concerns. It’s been a while since I’ve used a Zipcar so there were a couple new things I have questions / comments on! First, for the sake of whoever owns it, I found a ZipCard (numbered 159087) in the glove compartment – I left it there in case it was intentionally there but thought I should let you know in case that member’s looking for it! Second is a repair / problem issue. When I picked up the car one of the warning lights was on in the vehicle. It turned out (after eventually finding the translation of it in the manual — which is missing pages and should probably be replaced) that the car had detected that one of the tires was significantly low (and, when I first drove it, this was very noticeable as the car was struggling to move forward properly). I drove straight to the Petro Canada Station at Jarvis and Wellesley (where Zipcars keeps a number of vehicles) and was told that they would not provide me change for the air machine, that they’re not a bank, and that it’s not their air machine so it’s my problem to deal with. This isn’t Zipcars’ fault (at all) but given the attitude expressed by all employees at this station, as well as the numerous signs posted expressing that they would not even provide assistance with a machine on their own lot, I question whether Zipcars should be providing them with business by renting space on their lot. After being turned away from there for lack of two quarters to run the machine, I made my way down to the Esso at Church and Dundas, which was remarkably helpful. I wonder if the handful of underutilized spots in their lot would be an appropriate place for a couple of Zipcars! It turned out that one front tire was overinflated by ~4 PSI and the other was underinflated by about 8 (it should have been at 29 and was around 21). By the time I had the car back in working order, this whole ordeal had taken me around half an hour which forced me to extend my reservation by that amount of time. I recognize that minor maintenance items like air pressure in the tired are our collective responsibility as Zipcars members and I’m normally happy to do it. The only reason I call all this to your attention is that this was such a significant problem (as I mention, there were notable performance issues with the vehicle) that either a) the previous driver knew there was a problem and didn’t report or fix it or b) there’s some sort of physical problem with the front left tire that is causing it to leak significantly — both of which are problems I feel responsible to tell you about! When I extended my reservation the only automated options I seemed to have to report it were either that the gas wasn’t full enough or that I was in an accident… I may have missed the menu option, if so, my apologies! Last, but not least (I thank you again for taking the time to read this!), a suggestion on the new text messaging features. I received three messages during my trip – one to notify me of the original reservation, a second to notify me of the extension I made, and a third to remind me it was almost over and I could respond via text to extend. The first two messages were sent as e-mails-to-text, which required me to respond to my carrier (Rogers) with "Read" in order to see what it was about (all I originally received was "You have mail from do_not_reply@zipcar.com. Please reply with ‘read’ to read your message." The third message came directly as a text from 746-57. Given that the technology is already in place to send messages directly to members — is it possible for ALL of these messages to be sent in the same manner as the third one? It would save time, money, and hassle for members – assuming it’s not too cost-prohibitive for Zipcar it might be a great feature. Thanks again — I appreciate you taking the time to read my feedback! Neal