I love Getaround, almost as much as Amazon Prime Now. If either one of these service died, I’d certainly use the other more frequently.
This past Christmas, Getaround almost died, but not of natural causes. I definitely had premeditated thoughts. The question that came to the forefront was if Get Around would totally fuck my Christmas or Save it.
Here’s what happened. I was coming home for Christmas as a last minute decision and on a dime. I didn’t have any money and my parent had bought my flight to the midwest. Generally I rent a car, but I didn’t have enough on my card to do so. I had a brilliant though – GetAround was in Chicago! And that was where my flight was going. I immediately reserved a car for a fraction of the cost of a rental and since Get Around bills you up front and includes insurance, I didn’t have to worry about having enough saved or on a card when the time came.
My flight arrived in Chicago and I was a day early. I did that on purpose so I could enjoy a bit of the sex scene in Chicago before heading to my family’s farm.
The next day I was packing up and getting ready to go pick up the car when the phone rang. It was an automated message from Get Around. It said that the car I had rented had a dead battery and was no longer available for me.
Ok. What the fuck do I do now? I’m 2000 miles away home, 350 miles away from my parents house, have no money and the money I spent on the orignal Get Around car would be returned to me but not for 3-5 days.
I called Getaround and they were sorry, they had no other cars for me. I called back an hour later and explained the whole story to a nice agent and then ended the story with “Now I’m going to write about this experience and everything that happened to me for my blog.” I made it sound like had tons of readers. ” You are going to be in the story, Megan . Do you want to be the angel or the villian? Will you be the one to totally fuck me and my Christmas, or will you save the day?”.
It must have been the right thing to say. She called me back an hour later with a car at the same price that I had before. I drove off to my parent’s farm with time to spare for Christmas Dinner.
Ironically, I hit a deer on Christmas Day with the rented car. Feel bad for owner, but I was out $1000 for the deductible that Getaround doesn’t really tell you about. So Getaround fucked my new year, but saved Christmas.