FlightCar shuts down
farewell.flightcar.com
farewell.flightcar.com
They tried to reboot a few months back but the damage had already been done. The people who really wanted this sort of business to succeed (including myself) had already tried to embrace them, but got burned too much in the past to risk giving them another shot. My guess is the only potential market going forward were people who randomly came across FlightCar when searching for rental cars. My money is on this being an acquihire. The business failed.
(I previously wrote an open letter to FlightCar, based on my personal experiences, which also summed up the general consensus amongst everyone who had tried it in the past: http://watilo.com/open-letter-to-flightcar)
Edit: reading it again it seems maybe there are people continuing on with Mercedes Benz
Edit2: geez just read your post sans audio. That is pretty terrible
Source: Know someone who until recently ... worked at flightcar
I travel frequently for work and rent across all the major rental agencies (Hertz, Avis, National) and their discount subsidiaries (Thrifty, Budget, Alamo). These days the process is super smooth.
If you register with the agency's free rewards program, the process is usually:
1) Bypass counter to the rewards members area 2) Pick up pre-assigned car or choose your own from the designated pickup areas 3) Drive to exit, show drivers ID, and leave.
When returning, most agencies allow you to just drop it off and get your receipt delivered via email.
I've tried flightcar a few times and have no complaints about the experience itself - it just wasn't any better than going with a major agency, with more downsides: 1) weirder off-airport location (makes returning more difficult - vast majority of airports have clear signs for car rental dropoffs that are super easy to follow) 2) not as consistent in terms of car quality (major agencies standardize their lineups across a few models and years) and maintenance - harder to change/swap cars 3) not as good support (stuck somewhere in random CT, hertz locations everywhere, flightcar = BOS)
When I can, I rent with Sixt, which is typically way cheaper (though their customer service is also horrible and still has the same issues being a car rental agency). It's not that the rental agencies are always that expensive, but when the taxes and fees get tacked on, it's absurd and it's not something I want to support when I don't have to. (Energy Surcharge, Customer Facility Charge, Vehicle License Fee, Concession Recovery Fee.) It's like a restaurant charging you for a burger, then having fees for the condiments that come on it, the booth you're sitting in, and for having the lights on while you're there. Recently in Costa Rica, we rented a car for $10/day, but with fees, it came to about $100/day. But I digress...
Since I always look for deals, it means I'm switching between rental agencies and not sticking with one, so I've never seen the point in setting up rewards account. But your comment makes things sounds way too easy, so maybe I'll take the time and give it a shot. Thanks for the tip!
It's not worth my time and anxiety levels having to deal with the side-effects of the budget choice which you listed out.
I also get a pretty nice corporate discount from my work which makes the big boys a no brainer. Although I still used the main car rental places before and the process was super smooth. Literally need a car and sign up for it in 10 minutes. Show up and get the car in ~5 minutes. At airports with kiosks you scan your license and go straight to get the car.
1. You have specific, high-performance desires 2. You are very price conscious 3. You show little/no brand loyalty
I don't think these are in any way "negative" traits, but it's not hard to see how catering to these traits is not going to be a winning move for any business where there are much more profitable customers to be had.
End of the day, choosing a company for "loyalty" when there's no incentive to do so is just a waste of money.
(I do realize that the two examples weren't the same instance.)
I imagine the main advantage of soemthing like FlightCar would've been near-airport parking while you're away and little else? Providing shuttles as well as the big providers would be a bit of a challenge for a start-up.
When I said I wanted to waive the "optional" (to the extent that even their own printed paperwork said "not required to rent the vehicle") waivers and reduced/no deductibles (because between my fire/EMS vehicle insurance and credit cards, all their harbingers of doom about how I might not actually be covered weren't applicable), they outright refused.
"No, to reduce fraud if you want to waive our insurance, you actually have to open a claim with your insurer so we know that it will be covered"... Uhh??? Apropos of how nonsensical this is, isn't "opening an insurance claim without an incident sounds kinda ... fraudulent ... to me". "Sorry sir, policy."
Whatever, needed a vehicle, paid the extra, came back the next day to speak to the manager. CSR who was there the day before butted in, "Oh, no sir, you must have misunderstood me!". Outright lies. I was so tempted to send my girlfriend in later to try to catch them out again.
But most of the time, fairly painless. But when not so, then very painful.
I used to do a lot of business travel (40+ wks/year in some cases) and rented exclusively with Hertz or Avis. Never really had much in the way of a problem with them.
"He moved the customer support to Philippines because he can get someone for like 10-12$ an hr. Great idea.. right? Let's connect the customers who are loaning flightcar a 30-40k car to someone in Philippines who does not understand english or even knows what a floor mat is."
What the problem typically is is not a language barrier. These outsourced call centers are typically boiler rooms. The agents are incentivized to close the call, not fix the problem.
I only used them at SFO and the rules kept changing underneath them. They had to change locations multiple times and went from curbside service to being treated as an off-airport vendor. It's all the bloat and corruption of the taxi industry PLUS local municipalities getting their cut and fighting to keep it. That was going to be a very difficult terrain to overcome even if the customer service was perfect.
Overall, I was probably typical. When I could avoid the airtrain with their blackcar I was willing to put up with the off-airport location. As soon as I had to take the airtrain to the rental car facility and then hop in the blackcar, the modestly lower prices with more variable car quality was no longer worth it. Curbside pickup made a lot of sense. Until the SFO authority regulated it toward their own bloated interests.
Isn't that simply capitalism? An analog: iPhones default to google for web searches because google paid Apple $1b to keep it the default. Yet we typically don't call this bloat or corruption.
Hertz (or whoever it is these days) is the closest car rental at every airport because they pay the airport the most for this scarce resource.
Yes, this makes it difficult for new entrants into the marketplace. But, don't blame corruption, blame capitalism for everyone maximizing their own profits. Oh, and to bring this back to startups. What is Hertz/Taxi unfair competitive advantage? Multi-year agreements with each airport to give them closest access for airport passenger pickup. That is what Flightier had to overcome, it seems they struggled overcoming their competitors lock-in with the airports.
There it is.
I wonder if there's a successful business to be done in this space. I'm not convinced the fundamental economics work -- most business travelers value convenience and lack of failure (and are responsible for most high-margin, low-hassle rentals); families or individual non-business <25yo, etc. are more likely to heavily use and thus damage a car.
It also seems a bit crazy to rent out a personal car unless you don't particularly care about that car, or are very confident the rental agency can detect and fix any problems. Generally, even with great maintenance, ex-rental cars do not do great on resale compared to single-driver cars.
This would work great for 100% self-driving cars, but there's no particular reason for individuals to own and rent out the self driving cars -- those could just be owned by a fleet provider who can borrow at 0-2%.
The service that I think will be killer is Luxe/Zirx at the airport: drive right up to the curb drop-off, someone takes your car and then returns it right to you as you exit the baggage claim. For a fee somewhere between off-airport and short-term parking.
Actual valet parking at the airport would be great, though (with a manned facility where you drive up, drop off, and fly). I've been to airports which offered this. Aside from taxi mafia regulatory capture, I don't see why more places don't offer it. (On return, I'm indifferent between valet-returns-with-car, and taking a shuttle to your car elsewhere; the thing I want to optimize is dropoff speed.)
You're "indifferent" between having your car waiting for you at the curb and taking a shuttle to off-site parking? Wow.
No airport has space in dropoff/pickup to hold cars for more than a minute, so they wouldn't be able to do valet pickup based on arrival time.
I personally wanted it to be successful and put my brand new car there for a month. The mileage goes from 3,600 to 5,500 and I got $194 in return. I was happy about that and gave a good review on Yelp. However later experience was a horrible, horrible nightmare, they are just being irresponsible from time to time. And they didn't just do that to me, they did it to everyone. Eww.
That's $1,100 dollars, for which you got paid $194. How is this at all worthwhile?
So I guess the question is: Shutting down because it was acquired, or selling off value because it's shutting down? I guess the answer lies in how much FlightCar was sold for.
The rental car experience in general is ripe for disruption- flightcar was not perfect but the incumbents were and are just atrocious, from surly, conniving employees every step of the way to miserable shuttle/train rides to out-of-the-way and monopoly-priced oceans of asphalt.
If FC ran out of room for cars, they could always have charged a discounted rate for parking instead of offering it for free.
I guess I'll give Turo a try next time.
So many people listed their cars on FlightCar's monthly parking plan (park long-term for free at their lot near SFO, and occasionally they'll rent your car out) to avoid paying SF parking costs (~$400/month) that they had to force everybody to get their cars out of their "salvage yard."
When I arrived at FlightCar HQ, I saw a lot full of unused cars the day I showed up to pick up my car once and for all. Everyone just abused the system.
It was a pretty sweet deal for a while:
I was profiting off my car while parking it for free for over a year in San Francisco.