[speedmiester]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

My folks plan to rent a zoom car to travel from Bangalore to Kochi. They will have a driver to drive them and return the car to Bangalore.

What preparation is required with regard to state taxes? (As the car will go from KA to TN, KL and back). Is it a seamless transaction at state borders?

Why hire a self drive car if engaging a driver. Better book a cab. It might turn out to be cheaper and you need not worry about the car condition.

[sandeepmohan]

Originally Posted by speedmiester

Better book a cab.

They are indeed booking a cab for their journey towards Bangalore. They have no use for the cab during their time their, so its money wasted just keeping the cab and paying for driver accommodation.

They are not fixed on using Zoom. Wanted to understand state taxes when using self drive rentals.

[Rajeevraj]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

They are indeed booking a cab for their journey towards Bangalore. They have no use for the cab during their time their, so its money wasted just keeping the cab and paying for driver accommodation.

They are not fixed on using Zoom. Wanted to understand state taxes when using self drive rentals.

You can also check if uber/ola intercity cabs are feasible. In any case if you are taking a driver, a one way cab drop should also work right? Cost wise may be higher though.

[sandeepmohan]

Originally Posted by Rajeevraj

In any case if you are taking a driver, a one way cab drop should also work right? Cost wise may be higher though.

The situation is such that we want a driver we know, hence the Zoom car option. Its going to work out to ~Rs. 34,000 (For a Baleno) for the entire trip, keeping the car for two days, fuel, toll, visitor tax, driver charges, etc. Yeah, its expensive. I think you can hire an Innova for 60% of that figure!

[anandhsub]

Took a zoomcar ( swift diesel) for the first time in Kochi on the 24th.

Had a very pleasant experience with the only issue being the left orvm had its glass cracked. The car drove well despite having 98k km on the odo. I used to think these self drive companies change their fleet much more frequently.

However it costed 3.7k ( including fuel) for a 12 hour rental for about 150 kms. That was way more expensive than what I thought self drive rentals charge despite the festive season markup..

[roshithr]

Please some one tell me how's fastag generally work in Zoomcar? Customer care executive told me that I have to pay double cash at toll gate and submit the bills to get 50% refund. Is that a norm in Zoomcar?

[tj123]

Originally Posted by roshithr

Please some one tell me how's fastag generally work in Zoomcar? Customer care executive told me that I have to pay double cash at toll gate and submit the bills to get 50% refund. Is that a norm in Zoomcar?

I just used Zoom car for my Manali trip. And all the tolls are managed via Fastag. Zoomcar has a tie up with Paytm and one needs to have minimum Rs.500 as Paytm balance. Make sure you enable the linkage between Zoom App and Paytm before you start your trip. Once linked, Zoom will put a hold of Rs.500 on your Paytm account.
The toll amounts will be settled once the trip is over via Paytm balance. Everything worked flawlessly, so don’t worry about toll payments on Zoom cars.

[tj123]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

My folks plan to rent a zoom car to travel from Bangalore to Kochi. They will have a driver to drive them and return the car to Bangalore.

What preparation is required with regard to state taxes? (As the car will go from KA to TN, KL and back). Is it a seamless transaction at state borders?

It will depend on where the car is registered. The assigned Zoom car associate will brief you on all the vehicle paper work like (RC, PUC, taxes etc.) and give contact details on how to get the other states taxes done if its really required, as per my past experience it was done 5-10 minutes and the receipts are sent on Whatsapp. I got a PB registered car but I was told to pay HR & HP state MV taxes as I had to use the Zoom cars in these locations. I was stopped once on the HP state border while on my return journey, so better pay the taxes to avoid any hefty penalty.

[nec2152]

Just finished a 9 day rental (Jan 16 to 25) with Zoomcar in Delhi NCR.

Overall experience was a poor 3/10. I will not book a Zoomcar again. I wanted to avoid Zoomcar even this time as well, but had no proper option besides Zoomcar this time (Revv for some
reason wasn't available on 16th, Myles did not have the large car I wanted, and MyChoize rates somehow had GST added on top of the car rental fee which was already matching other platforms, making MyChoize quite expensive).

Car pickup:
I had opted for airport service. Walked with my luggage from T2 arrival to T2 parking (5-8min walk). I had called the local zoomcar executive after grabbing my baggage as instructed. The car arrived around 15-20mins late after I had reached the parking area. Thought this is a no biggie.

Car condition outside:
I had booked a Marazzo for the 7/8 seats. The red/maroon Marazzo that arrived was 2.5 years old and had ~78K kms on the ODO and had a ton of scratches and dents on the outside. Looked like it had not been repaired even once. The paint had faded away so much that it looked more than 10 years old.

Car condition outside:
The insides were worse, at least bothered me more than the outsides. Seats were torn at various places and dirty. The middle row had black seats but beige armrests, which had turned brown due to dirt, didn't feel like touching the armrests. One of the armrests was also not in a flat position but hanging downwards and was not usable.
I had plans to use the car for a few days of wedding functions, and the interiors of the Marazzo made me rethink the decision of using it to pick up guests.
The last row seats would not fold properly, the headrests were misaligned and would not fully open or close. When folding the last row, its headrests would get stuck against the 2nd row seat back. This was an issue for me since I had plans to fold the last row to carry large amount of luggage at times and seven passengers at other times.


Car change:

• Escalated the issue to Zoomcar customer care at 3pm from the Airport T2 parking itself. I was given a timeline of 30min for resolution. Meanwhile, the zoomcar delivery person wanted to take the marazzo back to the zoomcar site, and I went along with him to the zoomcar site since the new car would most likely get allotted from the nearest site. Also me being present on site would help check the condition of the car then and there itself before I accept the changed car.
• After 45mins, rang up zoomcar customer care again and they said they have asked the backend team to look into the matter and I would get a call from the backend team. I was asked to wait for another 15mins. I had reached the Zoomcar Samalka site by this time and was looking around at the 150-200 cars parked there. Most cars were battered, esp the 7 seater ones. Few Ecosports and Cretas were in decent shape. I had doubts if I will get a decent car from here, I was in the mood to leave the car booking and hire a local Innova later on, but I was told I won't get any refund now.
  
• Another 30mins pass without any call from the zoomcar backend team. I rang up customer care AGAIN who started giving me excuses, asked for 15min more and said that I will have to hang up that call after which the counter of 15min will start. He said I won't get a call from the backend team as long as I was on the call with customer care. That sounded fishy and more like a trick to get people to hang up. I was pretty furious at this time (waiting outside for 1.5hrs in the peak January winter of Delhi, and nothing in stomach since morning).
• After a heated call with the Zoomcar customer care which lasted around 30mins, I hang up to wait for another 15mins. This time I get a call from backend team, and he agrees to replace the car after looking at the pictures of the Marazzo. He provides me with 2 options, both XUV500. I check both on the site and one of them was in better than Marazzo so I ask for that to be cleaned up for delivery. This XUV500 is a W5 model, exterior is battered as well, 61K on the ODO but the interiors are in decent shape. Car is rattle bucket though. The check engine light comes and goes. Car is due for service and reminder comes up at every car start.
• After the XUV car is cleaned, it is handed over to me. Fuel level is 20%, I fuel up and resume my plans to driver further ~120kms, around 3.15 hours late than original. A couple of modifications had to be made to the plan.

Car usage during the trip:

• The XUV500 car drove okay overall.
• Tools in the boot rattled heavily when going over even small bumps.
• The check engine light on the instrument cluster would come and go on its own.
• The driver side door would need a lot of force to close otherwise it would not close properly, and without that, the doors would not centrally lock.
• The driver side seatbelt would not retract back.
• Handbrake lever cover was missing so it was an eyesore when pick up guests.
• W5 model did not have reverse parking sensors or the camera, and the huge D pillars of the XUV500 are major blindspots when reversing. I reversed into an electric pole which was completely hidden by the left passenger side D pillar in a small lane. Had no idea what I hit except the noise I heard, I moved the car aside to realize an entire pole was standing there Made a dent and a few scratches on the rear left fender and bumper for which I had to pay the damages as per the damage plan.
• The huge boot after folding the 3rd row was a big boon for wedding luggage.

Car return:

• Return was mostly uneventful. Drove to T2 parking, parked the car and took videos of the car condition, odo, fuel etc. I had already called up Zoomcar fleet to come pickup the car. The fleet folks show up ~15mins later, check the car briefly, take pictures of the visible damages and close the checklist.
• I had made a dent on the rear left fender and bumper while reversing. Got a call from Zoomcar in an hour to pay INR 1499 for the fender damages as per the damage coverage plan I had selected while booking. Made the payment while at the airport itself and the booking is fully closed an hour later.

Suggestions for others:

• Try to pick a car with lowest odo. The zoomcar booking site now shows this info when booking. During booking, I had the option of an 10K odo XL6 which I thought would be small for luggage and rather booked a 78K odo Marazzo, and paid the price. As it is known, zoomcar is struggling with bankruptcy and looks like they are skimping heavily on maintenance, even regular preventive maintenance like car service and looking into Check engine warnings. So forget fixing dents and torn up seats, or dirty armrests.
• I saw all the cars were battered in the Delhi Samalka site, esp the 7 seater ones. Maybe these big cars are rented for outstation trips and abused heavily. If possible skip on the 7 seater option.
• Zoomcar latest damage plans are reasonably priced but they seem to cover only the zoomcar vehicle and do not cover third party damages. This is strange to me since third party coverage has to be there somehow.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by nec2152

Just finished a 9 day rental (Jan 16 to 25) with Zoomcar in Delhi NCR.

Overall experience was a poor 3/10...

Great to see Zoomcar's world-class consistency in providing a piss-poor experience to paying customers continues unabated.

This was my experience 6 years ago.

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

The inevitable just happened, my Zoomcar bubble finally burst today...

[freakmuzik]

Had booked via Zoomcar for a quickly decided day trip to ECR from Chennai. We, a group of 6 friends, had planned to take two of our cars but then the desire of travelling together pushed us to look for a 7 seater.

I've never booked via Zoomcar before but this seemed to be the only available option in the middle of the previous night. I came across an Ertiga Petrol, run around 19k kms and 8 months old. Booked it from 4:30 AM to 4:30 PM

The Experience

1. Driver calls me up at 2 AM telling me he's delivered it outside my apartment and asking me to come down to do the check. I refuse and tell him that I can do it only close to my booking time and asked him to kindly let me sleep.

2. I go down at 4:15, complete all the photo uploads and realise the App Unlock isn't working. Called up the Customer Care - No Response! Called up the driver and he came down, opened the boot and then the doors. Delay of 30 mins.

3. Fuel was at 10%. Interiors were heavily soiled. No water in the Windshield washer. Exteriors were decent.

4. I fill fuel and took pictures of the odometer even before taking the trip (the photo uploads didn't mandate me to upload an odometer reading though)

5. Driving the petrol Ertiga for the first time, it felt super smooth! The trip went well, though being an Lxi, missed rear vents badly. Also noticed that the car returned only around 11.5 - 12 kmpl for the whole trip with 6 on-board.

6. There was some driving score thing in the app and I got a bad score with lots of warnings for sudden braking and acceleration whereas I was extremely sedate with the way I drove! It made no sense. Or it is designed in such a way that no one gets a good score as there are many incentives if you get a good one. :P

7. Returned the car at the same spot by 3:30 PM (1 hour early) and took a pic of the odometer. The App Lock wasn't working yet again and had to lock manually with guidance of the same driver.

8. There was excess fuel and I reported that to the team. I had utilised 101kms out of my quota of 120 km. But later when I checked the app, I was asked to pay 7000 rupees as Excess KM charges! I called the customer care (waited for so long). Also shot a mail with the photos of the Odometer I had taken (thank god I had them). Got it resolved in less than 36 hours and also a refund for the excess fuel is being processed as I type.

Frankly, I had a way better experience with IndusGo in Kochi than Zoomcar. I'll think twice with Zoomcar in the future as the experience made me feel there's so many unknown aspects, especially looking at how their cars are generally maintained. Plus, the driver who came to take the car back couldn't open it and hence the car was lying in the same spot even today! Hope they take it away soon.

[IronDrago56]

My Experience with Zoomcar was somewhat ok. But I had some nightmares with them. Here's what happened.

I had booked a Nissan Kicks in Chennai 3 days prior and got my car allotted to me. It was to be dropped at my residence on New Year's day at 6 AM. The Previous night at about 9PM I get a call from zoomcar saying that Home Delivery is not available so I'll have to pick the car up physically. So I thought that It was expected, it was a major Holiday after all. So before bed, I set an Alarm for 5 AM and decided to get ready and fell asleep.

At 3am I get another call from Zoomcar, and they told me that the Nissan Kicks that was assigned to me broke down So they will be giving us a Swift instead and its available at the same spot. So, I said alright and went back to sleep.

I wake up at 5am, Got ready and went to the Novotel Hotel nearby where the car was supposedly parked. I went in and it was raining too, I didn't have a rain coat so I was drenched to the bone. So, I went trying to look for the car, It isn't there.

I went to speak to Zoomcar support, they took 30 minutes to pick my call up. They assured me that the car is there, but it isnt. I was getting very annoyed at this point so they said they've escalated the issue to the team and then I'd get a call back in 10 minutes. 10 minutes comes and goes, I'm still wet, no car. I call them back and again wait 30 minutes. And they were getting rude to me, telling me to be patient patronizingly. I got very offended, They even cut the call. I was absolutely furious. And then an hour goes by, I call them again and finally, a new agent answered and he told me the Swift that was booked for me was still with the previous person who booked it. I was beyond upset, I had plans that had gone kaput.

They compensated me by giving me a full refund and giving me a pitten 500 zoomcar credits. Overall the way they theat their customers are very bad. I was so close to going to consumer court...

[anandpadhye]

Any recommendations for self drive rentals from Chandigarh for a trip to Himachal? Need a reliable vehicle in good condition, automatic.

Thanks in advance!

[zurura023]

Originally Posted by anandpadhye

Any recommendations for self drive rentals from Chandigarh for a trip to Himachal? Need a reliable vehicle in good condition, automatic.

Thanks in advance!

I had rented an EcoSport Diesel manual from Myles back in November 2020. The ODO had 43K on it and the car was in superb condition even with the engine detailed. I took it for a 1000 kms trip to Kinnaur and the car was lovely to drive. The tyres were in good condition and everything in the car operated the way it should have for a well-maintained 40+k run car. I had actually rented it to try it out before buying an EcoSport Diesel and was in love with the car. But alas September happened for Ford.

PS: A fun fact - In Chitkul, the temperatures hovered around -10 degrees overnight. There was a new Tata Harrier parked at the Zostel that I was staying and it was unable to start in the morning for quite some time. I feared the same for the EcoSport and expected some lost time in the morning trying to warm up the engine. The first crank and the car got ready for the day job.

[tj123]

Originally Posted by anandpadhye

Any recommendations for self drive rentals from Chandigarh for a trip to Himachal? Need a reliable vehicle in good condition, automatic.

Last December I took a Zoom car from Chandigarh railway station to Manali, the only automatic I got was a Swift AMT diesel. It had close to 90k Km’s on it. AMT’s are no fun to drive on hills as AMT struggle to fine the right gears according to terrain. The car which I got had very poor headlamps and I was struggling with it after dark. My advise will be to take a car which has low miles on it as rental cars are abused by senseless drivers.