RelayRides: The Oppo Review!

"Tapas" (tapas)
09/14/2015 at 21:17 • Filed to: None

I have wanted to drive an fun convertible on the twisties in California ever since I visited a while ago. Go on a real road trip, ya know? I went to San Francisco on the Labor day weekend without any plans and I didn’t want to leave without a wonderful driving experience.

The professional/semi-professional car review channels on YouTube tempt me and make it look so easy! Casually taking drives in amazing cars I can never afford any time soon.

So what do you do, if you want to have this experience for yourself without buying what you’ve longed to drive. Say, an F-Type, M3 or a C63 AMG 507?

Well you have several options.

Rent an exotic car from speciality rental companies, or Avis (Signature series), Hertz (Adreline/Dream) or Enterprise (Exotic)

Rent the ‘ol Mustang or Camaro from Avis, Hertz or Enterprise

Steal an exotic car by pretending to be a valet at a nice hotel

Use new services/apps like RelayRides and Getaround. Only limitation is you cannot take one way road trips. You’ll have to bring the car back to the owner

(Sixt is an option, but they have an SLK or equivalent for ~$250/day)

Problem is, option 1 and 2 are expensive from the get-go. You’re looking to pay upwards of $250 a day. But you will still have crippling mileage restrictions, as low as 75 miles a day. Each extra mile will cost you anywhere from $0.25 to $1.50. No bueno for a road trip.

Option 3 always seems to work in action movies. I’ll cover that in the another article. For now, I gave RelayRides a shot.

( Mostly because Getaround app’s install page was littered with negative reviews about taking forever to become an approved driver and vaguely listed requirements. I didn’t want to take a chance with a service that will potentially not let me drive ASAP. Getaround did have many options with cheaper rates and ability to rent hourly. )

Its a service and app that marries car owners with people who want to rent cars at really affordable prices with generous milage limits and a selection ranging from normal to drool-worthy cars (some with manual transmission) . RelayRides also provides an insurance to the car owner. Insurance for the renter is optional, but very important. I’ll get to this in a bit...

Think of it this way, you can get something a lot more interesting for ~$60 a day (including older cars, like an E36 M3), as opposed to a full size autotragic beigemobile from Fartz.

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Wanna get started?

A. Become an Approved Driver

The service requires you to submit your Personal, Driver’s License and Payment information. You also have to submit a picture of the license and a picture of your face alongside the license. You can have more than one driver on your trip, but they have to be approved through their own account.

Then, proceed to get fat and inebriated with newly met friends in San Francisco as you wait for 24 hours .

The debauchery is optional, but highly recommended. 70 degrees on a beautiful day and a micro-brewery around the corner with food provide ideal conditions for copious day drinking.

B. Shop around for a car you’d like

You can put in an airport or city to search for available cars. Once you put a location in, a list of available cars plotted on a map appear.

You can search by location, car type/make, milage limit, etc. Things to keep in mind before renting:

Conditions. Each renter will have conditions for renters. Milage limits, charge per mile outside the limit, Smoking/No Smoking, keeping the car clean, tolls, type of fuel to use, age requirement* (25+ or 30+) etc. All will be displayed on the car’s page. You can also contact the owner and clarify things with them.

Wait a second...milage limits!? Traitor! Hold your torches and pitch forks - they are usually 150 miles a day or more. It is also common to find cars with unlimited milage. If you do go over the listed milage, the owner will work it out with you. If its a few miles, owners don’t tend to make a big deal.

Pick-up. Most owners will pick you up from your desired location, but this is usually not free. The charge varies and is decided by the owner. But the charge is also displayed on the page.

Insurance! RelayRides is not recognized as a Rental car agency by most insurance companies. Check with your insurance company. You will most probably need the supplemental (secondary) insurance from RelayRides, in case you get into a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Any insurance your credit card may provide also kicks in after your primary car insurance, and it will also most probably not recognize RelayRides as a rental provider. Check with your credit card company to be sure.

For a peace of mind, get supplemental insurance from RelayRides. The basic insurance is 15% of the car’s rate per day. It is a liability coverage with a deductible of $3000. The premium insurance is 40% of the car’s rate per day. Its a liability coverage of $1 million with a $500 deductible. Yes its ridiculously expensive, but consider this as the only cache and just factor this cost in while browsing for cars.

C. Reserve your car with a message to the owner

Be nice, say hi. Don’t get excited and brag about track day wins. You can cancel the reservation while it is pending. I’m not sure if it can be cancelled after the owner accepts.

D. Pick up the car and don’t forget to take pictures

The app allows you to take and upload pictures of the car’s condition, before the trip. Try and take advantage of this. The process of putting up pictures is finicky and slowed my phone down. You can take live pictures with the camera, but then you are asked to crop the pictures down later. And that interface is frustrating. You could also upload pictures you’ve already taken. But you can only upload them on one at a time.

In the end, it all comes down to the owner of the car. If you guys get along, you’ll have no issues.

There you have it. You are now have a beautiful car for your road trip!

E. Drop it off with a full tank

Don’t forget this part. It could get you into trouble.

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My verdict: Do it!

My rental was a Monaco Blue Manual 2008 BMW 335i. It cost me $148 a day ($99 daily rate + $40 insurance +$8 fee, 150 mile/day limit). Not bad, considering that I’d be paying Avis around $100 more per day for an automatic Mustang.

This was my first time driving a manual BMW. I now know why people love them :)

Shifts were excellent and the exhaust note had a nice rumble. Growls got louder when you fed it more dinojuice. The steering just worked and was very direct. I drove it spiritedly among the hills and redwoods; mostly in 2nd or 3rd.

That aside, there were so many interesting and exotic cars to be had in the Bay area, but they were unavailable or too expensive for me to rent on a whim. *Being under 30 also disqualified me from renting some of the more exotic cars.

Had I planned this before-hand, I could have driven something much more awesome. All in all, the process of renting was smooth and the owner was cool. Things worked out very well and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience :)

Here’s some pictures...

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Spotted these and other gorgeous cars on my trip (a red 288 GTO, 2 356s), but I was too busy driving so I didn’t catch them all on camera.

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Both cars sounded amazing! And then, there was this...

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Disclaimer: I have not been paid by RelayRides for this article. But I would damn well like to be paid for it! I could definitely use the money for more automotive experiences :)

DISCUSSION (2)

yitznewton > Tapas
09/16/2015 at 09:59

Thanks for writing this up! I’ve been toying with the idea of renting a RR for a while; there is an auto BRZ and an S2000 here in NJ... but the bucket of fees and the logistical difficulty in driving 30-60 minutes, finding a place to stash my own car at the site, etc. have dissuaded me. If at the end of the day, I have to pay for 2 days and it ends up more than a monthly car payment, it doesn’t feel enough worth it.

On the other hand, if it were for a car I’d never buy, like a Challenger or Porsche or something, that might make some sense.

Tapas > yitznewton
09/16/2015 at 10:18

I agree. If the city you want to rent in has a good variety or number of cars on RR, the prices tend to be more competitive. But even then, you can always find people trying to rent out their regular cars at steep prices.