Self-Serve Car Rental

abb_road writes "Claiming 'Web2.0 values meet Brick and Mortar,' BusinessWeek is reporting on an entirely self service car rental company. Zipcar customers make all reservations online or using a cell phone, then use a card-key to pick up their car from the parking garage--no attendants needed. According to the article, one of the other important attractions of the system is transparency; the reservations system allows you to see exactly what cars in the area will be available at what times, and then reserve or adjust your plans accordingly. From the article: 'If the nearest Mini convertible is booked until 3 p.m., the customer might postpone plans by an hour to get it -- or decide the Mazda with a sunroof on another lot will do.'"

Annoying Trial

[MrPsycho]

This Evaluation of ZipCar 8.0 has expired. Please purchase the full version. Press your horn to continue.

Re:Sounds Interesting

[Karma Farmer]

Plus, what if someone hacked into the server and decided to "rent" a bunch of nice cars?

What if someone in a monster truck drives over all the cars in the parking lot?

Backgroung info on zipcar

[k4_pacific]

For those who don't remember, this is a followup to ZipCar's previous venture, a line of conveniently located car vending machines. The machines were essentially large parking garages that were built in major metropolitan areas. Customers would insert the MSRP of the car they wanted in dollars bills and change into the machine, then select their model using a Battleship-like combination of letters and numbers on a keypad. After selecting their model, a large steal coil would rotate and push the car off the parking garage. The car would then drop behind a door to be retrieved by the buyer. Unfortunately, the venture was fraught with problems from the start. Automakers wouldn't honor warranties on cars that had been dropped several stories, and many customers had difficulties obtaining refunds when they entered the wrong code and got a different model of car than they wanted.

For more info, see the Wikipedia page on Zipcar [wikipedia.org].

Re:Maybe they will copy Blockbuster?

[winkydink]

Yeah. If you're more than 3 hours late, they bill the full value of the car to your credit card.

Re:Sounds Interesting

[telbij]

What if someone in a monster truck drives over all the cars in the parking lot?

LMAO.

Good reason not to park in a huge line of cars: big temptation for monster truck drivers.

Re:old news

[blue kazoo]

Netherlands...major 40 cities

Surely this is a typo!