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Comment by sytelus | Hacker News Reader

I'm immensely just surprised someone would give away their $3500 to a stranger to make a rent of $70. Even if the theft was covered, I would worry about the potential abuse of such sensitive gear. I would worry about the person leaving things in sun or dropping on floor or get water on it and so on. It is insane to me that people want to do this.

But then again folks are renting out their apartment with fully loaded furniture and appliances to complete strangers. It is infinitely surprising to me that scammers haven't made business out of this. AirBnB doesn't require real background check and with just fake FB profile, pre-loaded visa card any scammer can be in business to steal thousands of dollars of valuables. People are effectively giving away keys to their home for just few 10s of dollars and scammers are just passing this opportunity up. This wouldn't have made sense to any economist and it still doesn't. How is this possible?

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> I'm immensely just surprised someone would give away their $3500 to a stranger to make a rent of $70.

turo.com facilitates giving cars worth tens of thousands to strangers for less (per day). They do claim to be insured, though - but I'm not going to be putting them to the test.

I almost used Turo once, but the whole thing seemed very ambiguous wrt liability, exact condition of the vehicle, etc. I don't drive normally, so am I even insured? The car owner's insurance likely covers lending the car out, but probably not renting it out, and they likely aren't even aware of that.

The information asymmetry and friction with these niche p2p sharing services just isn't worth it. You're basically learning the rules of an entirely new industry with each one - a significant amount of mental bandwidth to discover whether or not it will even work for what you need.

Sharegrid reached out to me once (because I was selling a camera on Craigslist). I looked over the site for about an hour and still would have had no idea about this "voluntary parting" issue.

> Sharegrid reached out to me once (because I was selling a camera on Craigslist).

Are you saying Sharegrid was suggesting you should instead keep the camera and rent it using Sharegrid?

Quite some sales technique if so...

Yes, I think so. Or they just assumed someone selling a pro video camera might be in production and have more equipment.

I'll say that GetAround at least was great when the guy renting our car totaled it. Got the full value back, he was on the hook for the deductible and everything.

A quick googling tells me both owners and renters get screwed on Turo, with little recourse

The comparably serious consequences of committing grand theft auto probably act as a backstop in that case.

It's not grand theft auto. It's called "theft by conversion".

This is the new gig economy. I wish I was being sarcastic.

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