Zipcar gets a bit cheaper
Zipcar, which I have started using in the past couple of months and greatly prefer over the time-wasting experience of a regular rental car, has just dropped their rates in Toronto: it’s now $10.50/hour or $69/day for their baseline cars, or $12.50/$87.50 if you want to drive a Mini.
This price drop puts them well within striking distance of the price of a regular rental car: normally, I could rent a car for a day in Toronto from Budget for about $50 plus gas, but that’s because I have a gold Visa card that covers the extra insurance; without that, it would be about $70/day plus gas.
If I were doing a multi-day rental, I’d probably go back to Budget, but for the occasional “I need a car now, for a few hours”, I’ll stick with Zipcar and appreciate the new lower rates.
7 Comments
Did you do the comparison to AutoShare? I’m in the market to join one and wondering which is better. I guess if you travel a lot, Zip might make more sense, since you can rent cars in any of their cities…
I did do a comparison. AutoShare came out a bit cheaper (depending on how much you drove), but Zipcar has cars in more locations whereas AutoShare is only (I think) in Toronto. My first Zipcar rental was in San Francisco, in fact.
There was a shoot-out on the Torontoist last fall between the two if you’re looking for more details.
In a day and age where companies all boast about profits and such that a progresive company like Zipcar can admit that things are not going as well as they expected and will lower prices to compete with the much smaller Autoshare.
John
I didn’t hear why they lowered their prices, but I expect that the lower AutoShare prices may have been a factor. However, AutoShare has a higher annual cost and requires a hefty deposit, which is less attractive if you’re a very occasional driver.
We recently launched a new company called Sunday that is very beneficial to Zipcar users. You can store your login details in the Sunday Portal and our team of agents can help you reserve a car real time. You can interact with them via email or phone. Use the promo code “zipcar” for a free month trial.
We do a whole bunch more stuff for our customers, too.
http://www.asksunday.com
A third-party service to book a Zipcar? It would take longer to compose the email to the “team of agents” than it would to just reserve it yourself online!
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