
The Importance of Overdelivery - experience using FlightCar (YC W13) - changdizzle
http://cooleronline.tumblr.com/post/47557002673/the-importance-of-overdelivery-experience-using
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shrig94
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

~~~
changdizzle
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.

Ed

~~~
shrig94
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

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jellicle
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.

~~~
shrig94
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.

~~~
shpxnvz
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?

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rdl
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.

~~~
shrig94
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

~~~
rdl
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.

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to3m
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.

~~~
toki5
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)

~~~
gav
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/>

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

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johnrob
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.

~~~
johnrob
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.

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songzme
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?

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kunle
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.

~~~
changdizzle
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

~~~
coffeebite
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.

~~~
changdizzle
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.

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orangethirty
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?

