The Importance of Overdelivery - experience using FlightCar (YC W13) | Hacker News Reader

The Importance of Overdelivery - experience using FlightCar (YC W13)

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45 pointschangdizzle30 comments

Hey Edward,

First, thanks for the feedback. We're working in an industry plagued with poor customer service, and we want to differentiate ourselves to those parking and renting with FlightCar by providing a better experience than they can get anywhere else.

We are sorry for failing to deliver a reliable service. Feel free to email me directly, shri@flightcar.com, and let me know how we can fix this. I'll outline below on some things we've already implemented and others that we are working on fixing and will implement soon and what we've done to make sure no one has an experience like your's again.

Car pictures: We started taking pictures of all cars at every handoff. Unfortunately, your car was dropped off a few days before we started this practice, but it's now standard protocol.

Driving record checks: We've had these in place all along. We obtain a driving record from each renter's local dmv to make sure that their driving history doesn't indicate that they're at risk of damaging an owner's vehicle.

Concerning tolls: We're working on a system to manage and capture tolls so that vehicle owners no longer face this problem.

Phone call and wait time: I honestly don't know what happened when you had no response on our phone line. I've heard from other customers that they have had difficulty reaching an operator as well, so we are looking into changing our phone system provider asap. Your experience was definitely the exception. I'm so sorry about that.

Your stuff being placed in the car: The garbage bag situation is utterly unacceptable. This is not the standard practice by any means and we've already spoken to the employee who handled your items and made it clear that what happened will never happen again.

What we are doing now: Rujul, my cofounder, has printed your blog post and handed it to each member of our staff and made sure that all of our staff realizes that what had happened was unacceptable and understands what we need to do to fix it.

Once again, I apologize for your terrible experience and do let me know how we can fix it.

Sincerely, Shri

Shri,

Thanks for your response, I will indeed e-mail you tonight. I can assure you that this blog post wasn't meant to incite a mob or belittle what you guys have accomplished in such a short time. I wouldn't have used FlightCar if I didn't think it had potential and genuinely wanted to try it.

For many people, rental cars aren't always a solution and the savings that FlightCar offers is huge. We all know the adage Rome (and services like AirBnB and Uber) weren't built in a day, and I wish you and your team the best of luck. Thanks again for the response and your apology, and will be in touch with you offline.

Thanks Ed, I appreciate that.

Looking forward to hearing back from you tonight. Would love to take you to lunch (on me), if you have time, and hear you out on improving the process.

Cheers, Shri

Like so many of these other startups, people don't have a sense of what, exactly, they are disintermediating.

Automobile rental: visible damage, invisible damage, wear and tear, tolls, tickets, hit-and-run accidents on five-year-olds... Invisible damage and wear-and-tear are priced in, everything else is laid squarely at the feet of the renter by the rental company, often with punitive fees attached.

Flightcar: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha it's all on you, for $10/day.

And there's no easy way they can actually put those things back on the renter where they belong. This automobile owner doesn't know it yet, but the same renter who blew through the tolls on the Golden Gate also racked up 12 parking tickets for parking next to a fire hydrant, which he crumpled up and threw away... It'll be a nice surprise when he tries to renew his registration two years from now.

how do you propose that flightcar solve this issue and put the violations back to the renter?

Work with local governments to get the fine information easily accessible - it would improve both the gov't 'customer service' as well as the fee/revenue collection.

That's a different area of business, but it's something that might be useful both for residents and maybe for a separate startup.

We're working on getting a system in place to manage the tolls.

Our renters are vetted with an extensive Driving Record Check, so they're highly unlikely to get a red light/speeding ticket, though it's possible.

Visible damage is covered by our insurance policy as well as liability, and we now take pictures of the cars' interiors and exteriors to keep track of this. Invisible damage is covered by our mechanical damage policy, which owners can make claims from when they notice something happened to their vehicles.

Invisible damage of the type people driving rental cars tend to impart (largely excessive wear) may be manifested as premature parts failure and expensive repair bills years after the fact. Is this something that the insurance policy and claims process is able to handle?

I like the concept of disrupting old industries, and travel has a lot of stupid parts which should be fixed. However, I don't get the economics here as stated.

I can park at Park SFO for $10/day. Off-airport parking at other airports is generally similar.

My car costs me about $0.25/mile ex-fuel to operate (depreciation, maintenance). That's pretty standard; for a new car, it's easily more than that.

I value my time after arriving back from a long flight at $100-200/hr (in general I don't, but in the specific case where I'm exhausted, I do). That's why I drive to the airport, so I have my car waiting for me on arrival. If I didn't, I'd just take BART (and sometimes do).

At 90 miles/day mileage limit, I lose money ($22.50) if someone rents my car, even including free parking ($10) and the rental payment ($10). If I leave my car parked for a month and no one rents it, I'm ahead for sure (the cost of parking). If I had a car with only legal minimum liability insurance and someone destroys it, I'm also probably ahead based on their liability policy (I hope).

Speeding/red light/etc. stuff would be totally obnoxious.

The hassle of having to remove everything from the interior of the car, trunk, etc. and then replacing it after, as well as documenting condition pre and post rental, and any dropoff/pickup hassle vs. the Park SFO or SFO Long-Term Parking options, pretty much kills it for me anyway, but those aren't universal, so I'm not including those. Maybe some people value the free car wash more than the hassle of those things.

The only way this would really make sense for me vs. parking would be if the payment were substantially higher, OR if you got some non-cash benefit for renting out your car -- such as cheap/free rental of an equivalent vehicle elsewhere. I can sometimes get awesome cars from Hertz for $20-30/day, but in other cases, it's $100. Being able to "trade" my car for an equivalent car in another city at little or no marginal cash cost would be compelling. The cars could be other customer cars, but could also be from car dealers trying to demo/sell new models or something.

If executed well, we're a lot more convenient than the third party lots and even more convenient than airport owned long term parking. (EDIT: So we think the value of $10/day is quite low--it's more like an $18/day value (airport long term parking price), plus the cost of an extensive exterior and interior cleaning and the time benefits--we want FlightCar to be a free and magical experience. That's our goal.)

We really messed up Edward's experience and as a result ruined the entire value proposition.

Generally speaking, your car is very unlikely rented for every day of your trip and even more unlikely to have its miles maxed out (and if they went over, you're being compensated for $.35/mile).

We're aiming to be the industry leader when it comes to service in airport parking. We provide free Starbucks coffee to every parker and renter along with bottled water and our black car service. We also clean the cars inside and outside quite thoroughly so that owners come back to a car in a condition better than they left it. We've been able to clean off exterior scratches and clean out heaps of pet hair and everything in between.

We wouldn't be working on this if we didn't think it was a positive return for both sides of the marketplace. We really believe that having two garages at the airport, one with cars accruing parking charges and one with cars being rented for insane prices is incredibly inefficient, and we want to help consumers by changing that.

We're working on improving our user experience and benefits to parkers (non-cash), so please feel free to email me, shri@flightcar.com, if you have any great ideas on how to sweeten the deal for the parkers!

Cheers, Shri

Ah -- if you think of the car wash as "light detailing" vs. "automated car wash at the gas station", that's a big difference in the value proposition. (~$5 vs. ~$40).

I agree convenience could easily trump the financial returns from renting the car (or even vs. airport parking costs). It looks like you have some good ideas on that front.

Their mileage limit is 90 miles/day.

My car has cost me £0.65/mile for all costs excluding fuel (which would I imagine be the big cost difference between the UK, where I am, and America). I don't believe my car is even terribly expensive as cars go - TCO over 2 years so far would barely buy you a small hatchback - but at $10/day, I'd still be losing out simply based on the valet driver driving it ;)

OK, so maybe if you ignore the cost of the car/insurance/car tax (since I would pay these anyway, whether I hire the car out or not), and focus only on repairs and servicing, because these are roughly proportional to distance driven, the cost is £0.07/mile. 90*0.07 = £6.30, which is pretty much $10.

Perhaps my car is just more expensive to run than average (perhaps due to its age), or I take needlessly good care of it for a second-hand one, or whatever, and/or maintenance is super-cheap in America. But add in the risk of your average rental driver taking less care of your car than normal, quite apart from the bother of sorting out speeding and parking tickets, and it's starting to feel like I wouldn't be earning enough money from it to make up for the potential hassle.

What if you include the value of not having to pay for airport parking? (in cases where e.g. you couldn't find a ride to the airport)

Well, true enough. (You also save money on the taxi, if the alternative were taking one.) I just think there's a certain value to be attached to the bother of having the thing hired out with some random driving it while you're not around. I don't have an actual figure for what this value is, but my gut says that it's not sure airport parking is quite expensive enough to make up for it :)

I'd want to be at least certainly making a profit on the basic rental, no matter what happens. (But then again, it's probably unlikely that every renter will drive it 90 miles per day. Additionally, perhaps the free carwash and valet clean should swing me more than it does. And maybe I've just always visited airports with cheap parking. Etc.)

Realistically, I suppose, I've just made this decision somewhat irrationally, thinking of the bother and expense of sorting out a knackered clutch and a pile of parking tickets and a tank that's only half full (probably of the wrong type of fuel). But even after trying the more rational approach given in my original post, I'm not finding the figures to stack up well enough to convince my gut otherwise...

yeah, at the bottom of the return receipt they actually give you a very rough estimate - long term airport parking for $18/day @ 10 days, + the $40 i received from flight car, add in the round-trip cost for a cab ~$100, and that's a +/- of $320. but, as to3m said and i had mentioned in my post, i don't know if it's worth the post-rental hassles as well as the added stress during your vacation - again, it was my choice, and i don't regret trying out the service

It's $18[1] to park at SFO. Assuming 4 days it's $40 vs. $-72, I'm not sure it would be worth $28/day to me to run the risk of damage to my car, tickets, etc. There is the upside of a carwash and not having to worry about damage in the lot.

If I'm travelling on business somebody is going to be picking up the cost of parking anyway.

[1] http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/parking/options/long-term/

Exactly, or the cost of the cab to and from the airport

Make/model of said car?

2001 BMW 330d Sport.

In my experience (ex-mechanic here), BMWs do have a higher than average cost of ownership.

Possibly true. Anecdotally (just from talking to people) it seems like I don't pay much more, if at all, than do friends of mine with cars you might expect to be substantially cheaper to keep running. Perhaps it would be more costly if I went to a franchised dealer.

Anyway, my feeling is borne out by the 2012/13 car running costs survey from the AA - see http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/running_costs/. My car cost £30,000 when new so if we go for that column, expect £0.093/mi for maintenance, servicing and tyres. I bought it second hand, so if we go for the <£16,000 category instead, reflecting the price I paid, that's still £0.07/mi.

(I haven't had to buy tyres for my car just yet. £0.093/mi is probably closer to the figure I'll actually have by the time I dispose of it.)

So you could re-do my back-of-the-envelope calculations with these figures instead, but I don't think it comes out substantially more or less in favour. Though if I needed to pay $18/day for parking at the airport, maybe that would help change my mind - I suppose I have just always parked at cheap airports, then.

I just noticed it is a Diesel powered model, which have lower operating costs (in my experience). Still, for the amount of safety/features you get in that car, the cost is good.

A lot of good points have been mentioned here regarding the downsides of renting out your car. I'll add a more generic one: "can of worms" resistance. In other words, I'd probably shy away from using this service because there's a small chance it might turn into a hassle due to damage, tickets, or whatever else. Even if Flightcar adequately covers these costs, there is a non-trivial amount of hassle in the redemption thereof.

If the flightcars are listening: it's worth figuring out some way to counter this resistance...

As a side note, this is also the reason that I normally buy insurance from rental car companies even when my credit card already covers rentals as a perk. I've used that perk in the past and then had to make a claim; getting the whole thing approved and paid out was an exercise in paper pushing. Never again.

Ok, here's one idea - unfortunately it's an altered product: I'd like to pick up a driver, take him to the terminal with me (where I get out), then have him drive my car to a flightcar parking lot. Instead of renting out my car, I'd rather simply pay a reasonable daily rate. When I arrive back from my trip, I get picked up in my car and then drop off my driver back at the lot.

What is missing in this entire experience is that FlightCar did not do a good job of reassuring customers, and the hassle after the fact (checking with dmv, worrying about tickets, etc) does not seem to be a very pleasant.

First of all, some people are very protective of their cars. Handing them over is a sign of trust, and FlightCar has the responsibility to make customers feel comfortable, which they did not do.

To put it in perspective, imagine that you rented out your room. Your tenant decides to put all your stuff in a garbage bag and put it in your closet, and left it there when they moved out. How would you feel?

Some really good points here.

Wondering if you've corresponded with the founders about your experience? I've a car with FlightCar at the moment and I've found them to be really responsive. Just a thought.

thanks for the response! nope not yet, but definitely will do so when shooting over the info about the toll to be reimbursed, it seems like the founders themselves are answering the 1-866 line, 2 birds with 1 stone, that whole deal

I understand that you are frustrated. Thanks to blogs and forums, it is so easy to criticize someone in public. But that doesn't mean you should. Perhaps, you should have spoken to the founders first about your complaints and concerns before going public.

I see your point, but respectfully disagree. When someone posts a review on Amazon about a product or on Yelp about a restaurant or service, how is that different? I also don't think I was overly critical and hopefully provided some valid points and advice, and wanted to jot everything down while it was fresh in my mind.

I don't see the benefit here. At all. You are giving this people a free ride on your car in exchange for a couple of bucks. Without taking in consideration a lot of risks associated with this. What if the renter gets a DUI? What if while drunk, the driver(renter) kills someone in an accident? What about your insurance? Will it cover it?

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