–Brennen

Perhaps I wasn’t clear in my first comment. I use Philly Car Share, I love Philly Car Share, I just think it could be better.

And I guess that’s what my expectations were for the piece. However, doing a little digging around this site reveals that it’s more of an informative venue rather than critical.

That’s cool, just different than what I thought it was.

Nice article.

I’ve been car free for a year and a half, and have no complaints about PCS, only about rude people. PCS depends on the individual users to return the car on time, not smoke in it, keep it clean, etc. Unfortunately there are a few people who abuse what is otherwise an awesome system.

Not that a website is everything – most important is the convenience of my closest cars. And Philly Car Share scores there too – across the street (and on the next block, and the next). I effectively ended my Flex/Zip membership in L.A. when they removed all the cars from my neighborhood last month (Zip’s disorganized customer service was a debacle too).

As someone who has used multiple services, I can say Philly Car Share seems well organized, very customer-friendly, and reliable.

Second: Philly Car Share is a voluntary service and if you don’t want to use it, YOU DON’T HAVE TO USE IT. Member IDs aren’t thatannoying if you can remember to keep your numbers handy–you could even tape them on your key fob. Furthermore, there wasn’t much to critique regarding the service. I reserved a car (easy), I found the car (easy), I started the car (not as easy as I’d assumed) and I drove the car around town (easy). Upon ending my journey, I got gas (easy) and I parked the car in the same spot where I found it (easy). How’s that for a short critique? As far as the website goes, it’s easy to use and it gets the job done. That’s all I need from a service website.

I wanted to use a car for the day and I did exactly that. My post was written to encourage people to try Philly Car Share and to show them that it’s not as intimidating as it may seem. Keeping my length limitation in mind, I added details to my post that I thought were relevant to my experience. I’ll happily use PCS again and I will continue to encourage my friends to try it.

Why not use my name, or my birthday, or my email, part of my SS, my address, or pretty much anything that has any significance in my life.

I get scolded by their operators every time I call because I don’t know the ID they gave, that’s just a poor experience.

P.S. I was expecting a little more meat in this post because of the title. Why not have a real critique about the service rather than just a tutorial about how to use the service.

Here I’ll start; I am pretty underwhelmed with their website. It appears to just be a skinned version of an off-the-shelf product. The fact that they’re catering to such a specific audience you think they could have done some unique things. How about recommending day-trips according to my address, etc. I imagine with Zip Car, Hertz, and others rolling out similar car shares they’ll have to get on the ball.