[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by AnnaRocks

ZOOMCAR & an Old XUV 500 - A rattling combo

Beautifully written, and very entertaining. The Caretaker guy really is like something from a horror story!

I am sure that the experience was absolutely not entertaining. Although you might have had to laugh a couple of times just to keep your sanity.

Thank you for the great read --- but, more seriously, thank you for giving these scamsters the publicity they deserve.




Oh, and I think I might have left my wallet in your car...

[AnnaRocks]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

Beautifully written, and very entertaining. The Caretaker guy really is like something from a horror story!

Oh, and I think I might have left my wallet in your car...

Hahahaha. How peak level creepy would it be if the caretaker guy was actually on Team BHP and you were....Wait, are you?


I am right now getting a call from that guy's number. Are you.... I don't need the refund bro. Please keep it. And I will also ask my friend to sell his VW and Honda and buy only Mahindra cars, esp XUV..

[Gupts007]

I don't think anyone can have a good experience with this scam company. I have had multiple dealings with them and each experience was terrible. You might ask why did I go back to them? The thing is I had no choice and the earlier experiences, I thought were just a one off thing but the last one was terrible.

I booked a vehicle with them for delivery in Whitefield, Bangalore as I had to go for a holiday to Chikmagalur. Delivery was around 7AM. So I get this call that the vehicle is on the way and then despite repeated calls it didn't come until 10AM. At that time the guy just gave up and said we don't have a vehicle call up the call centre. One can keep calling their number but they don't respond. In the end they just said they don't have a vehicle. I had hotel bookings and all done prematurely and all that was about to go to waste. Last minute I had to get a ola outstation cab and atrocious pricing. The story didn't end there. The refund was such a pain to get.

I can't imagine how this company is still running. They have no systems, no checks, no staff in place. I guess the only reason they are surviving is that the demand is so high people just overlook their appalling service.
The cars they provide are not even roadworthy. The tyres mostly look like worn out tyre tubes and I once tweeted with the tyre pics of a vehicle they gave to me. However nothing seems to shake them or wake them.

[KrisTvpm]

Although have no experience with this particular rent-a-car business, have tried out another one called REVV in Bengaluru and the experience has been pretty much substandard.

Booked an XUV5OO for a one-day outing, one day in advance with option to home-deliver. Paid approx 5000 in advance, after uploading my DL/ID copies.

On the due-date, the delivery guy calls up & asks for location. I say I've already provided on the booking platform, but he wants it sent to his whatsapp. What the whatsapp, anyway I sent it !

He calls me atleast 5times en-route, somehow finds my den which is right in the middle of easily recognisable landmarks. Delivers the car after 1hour from promised time.

Did a cursory drive before he leaves, found the car interiors very untidy, middle-row seats unable to tumble forward, last row seats looks like a place where they dump all unwanted stuff, full of grease/dirt. Fuel was full upto the brim.

Anyhow, mechanically the car was found to be fine, super pickup, easy drive, no unwanted sounds etc.

Accepted the car & bid farewell to the chap.

Used the car full day with family on a heavily rainy day, car performs effortlessly except for the untidiness. A/C was average though.

Come evening/darkness, coupled with rain, I decide to switch on the headlights, the dim/bright/park all put together produces light equivalent to a "jugnu" My mistake, didn't check the lights before takeover!

Somehow drove the car home, called them to come collect the car by 11pm. They give me contact number of a chap whom I must call (?), called him, he denies any knowledge.

Kept the car till next morning; they call me & ask for my whereabouts. I assured I've not taken the SpaceX to Mars with their XUV, so they promised to send someone within 1hr. He comes, inspects & takes the car back.

They charge me Rs.4900 or thereabouts for a day's drive of hardly 150km! Fuel-gauge shows hardly two/three blocks down only, but I was charged this much!

Overall, felt I was overcharged for such short distance/usage, for an untidy car with no headlights. Saving grace was the car didn't give any other trouble, it chugged along all day effortlessly although it showed ~250000km on the odo.

[prithvi53]

I had a bad experience with zoomcar about 4 months back. I had booked a relatively new nissan magnite. It was easy to locate in the coimbatore airport parking lot and I was pleasantly surprised with the automated process. I just used my app to unlock the car and the keys were inside the car. The fuel gauge showed full and everything seemed okay.
I was returning the car three days later and about 20 kms before reached the airport I filled up the car. As usual I told the attendant to fill up the tank. I had asked them to stop when the auto cut off stopped the fuel supply. I paid and started the car and to my horror the fuel gauge did not show a full tank. it was showing 5 out of 6 bars. This was weird but I thought it might come up in a km or so and went ahead.

About 3 or 4 kms before the airport, it still showed only 5 bars out of 6, so stopped again and tried filling more fuel. As expected the auto cut off happened after about Rs100. Since the fuel gauge was still not showing full, I insisted that they keep putting in more fuel. The attendant kept putting it little by little and slowly it took Rs700 worth of fuel. This itself was weird as usually cars don't take this much fuel after the auto cut off. At this point there was literally no more fuel that could go in and I could literally see the fuel right on top . Even th le fuel gun couldn't go in without causing an overflow.
After all this, the car is still showing only 5 out of 6 bars. So i called the customer executive at coimbatore through the app and i told him my issue. He told me that it's a commin problem with this magnite and not to worry. He said when you leave the car just mention the tank is full. So I did just that .
However a day later I get a mail saying that I didn't fill the tank and they demanded about Rs750 as a penalty for the same. I tried telling them the issue but after about 25-30 mails , trying to explain the issue and asking them to contact the coimbatore team to verify this, they refused to budge. There was definitely a problem with the cars fuel gauge and the local team probably knew about it but end of the day I was forced to pay them the extra money.

The worst and most frustrating part is that there is only an email address and no phone number of anyone who i can speak to. I couldn't even speak to the customer service team at coimbatore as the app doesn't let you call after you terminate the booking. I ended up paying and telling myself that if I ever have to take a rental car, I'll look for other options.

[cule1899_bhp]

Reminds me of the horror show I've had a few months ago. I can empathise with everything you've went through. But thankfully I couldn't even take the car, so my predicaments were more about lost money and some hindsight that always follows with these kind of experiences.

I booked a car for an out station trip, the pick up was in the early hours the next day. Surprise surprise, there was no address no owner no car. So I had to contact a local car rental at midnight for a car the next day during the early hours. Thankfully they were very helpful regarding that and I was lucky to have the car available. I thought I'll eventually reach out to zoomcar and get the refund. Only not.

After doing everything I could through the app I realised one can't simply talk to a zoomcar representative directly over a call. It's impossible. So the friend that accompanied me on the trip, who was based out of Hyderabad, tried to go to their regional office. Surprise surprise, there is no office. By this time I resigned to the thought of getting anything back and only kept raising complaints one after the other. When they finally got back on one of the support requests they put it on me that I needed to cancel the booking 24 hrs prior to be eligible for a 100% refund. No matter how many times I was trying to make them understand that there was no car/owner it was returned with a "We consider your request closed. Please rate us on your satisfaction from 1-10". I was starting from my hometown unlike some horror stories that I read of people ending up nowhere with no car or someone to reach out to at odd hours.

I don't like calling anyone or anything out like this but zoomcar screams "Scam" every time I remember this experience or read reviews on the playstore app. And it felt very textbook too, in fact it left me questioning my own awareness.

[PaddleShifter]

I was planning a road trip to North East in my mind around February this year (It did not materialise by the way). My close friend (he is a psychiatrist and loves to probe things too much with others) had a lengthy discussion with me regarding the reason why I wish to drive from New Delhi to North East in a car rather than fly to Kolkata and renting a zoomcar. I had given him a number of reasons that he did not understand. Will show him the last few posts of this thread now.

I came across an ad of a travel company offering self driving rentals and tour packages to Leh. Somehow I am never comfortable renting a car, especially with the way consumer laws work in our country.

[dsr001]

I can sympathize with your story (will add mine some day); I hope Zoomcar survives and does better as it is often the only option.

[airguitar]

My super-boss once said "Ideas are dime a dozen, but to bring the idea to life, efficiently and accurately, the implementation, is the hardest". While the idea is great, I still maintain that most rental car businesses in India do not put the customers first ( specifically, customer safety ) as do most other new-age companies. Many of the customers of these cars are equally callous about how they use these cars ( "Come on, it's not my car anyway" ). It's best that you don't choose rental car services at all.

I have never used one, and will never. The number of unknowns when using such a car is simply too much to handle.

[Pam81]

I have terrible experiences with Zoom Car and Revv. Not using them for 9 months now and will never use them. Scam and really stupid business model where zero respect to customer.

Zoom is the most horrible one!

First, no real customer service. Amazon's business model inspired them and so, they never own any cars now but tweak the legal system's loop hole and generate a contract of lease between the rental customer & participating private car owner. So, very lean customer care (less expense for Zoom) and no real spend of car's health.

Second, Since they don't own the car, you are in luck & GOD's mercy in finding a car that is clean, well maintained and devoid of problems. It all depends on the private car owner's behavior. Most of these car owners (not all but majority of them) like to provide continuous availability to Zoom car since they do not schedule but Zoom car does (just like OLA / Uber to the drivers). They (private car owner) need to take firm decision to pull the car out of schedule to inspect & determine if it needs service. In reality, they do not even take a look until there's a need to use the car for themselves. So, 90% of the time, expect the car interiors to be dirty or at the mercy of previous renter. If the previous renter found the car dirty beyond his / her tolerance, why would they bother to clean it up before they return it, plus that is like extra on their part within the rental time for which they are paying the money.

Third, if you experience issues with the car, during the time of your rental, expect no help from anyone but all by yourself. It is tough to catch either Zoom car customer care or the owner of the car. Even if you are successful in contacting either of them, expect a cool answer of, "Sir, please take the car to nearby workshop and fix it at your expense and Zoom will reimburse you against the bill". This is the most funniest part. The car owner rents out without worrying about the car and Zoom never bothers anyway and if it happens to be a bad day for you, please fix the car as if you would do for your own car.

With all these, Zoom put all the risk on you because you wanted the car. So, it is crime to expect good cars from Zoom and if you get a bad one, guess what, it is your responsibility to fix it because when you are in middle of your rental time, there's nothing else you could do. They won't cancel your booking for such reasons. As soon as you agree to take the car, there's no cancellation of booking is possible. Thank GOD, they are in India where customers are a joke.

Now Revv: They have staff, try to do their bit to keep the cars on their own but sadly their execution is a hit or a miss. I booked them for 4, ended up using for 2 times and cancelled 2 times due to their issue of not able to give me the booked car. For both cancellations, they gave me full refund.

My only saving grace is Orix backed My Choize. Lengthy procedures, lots of paperwork but cars are reasonably well maintained and you get a good customer support. Used them for 3 times now and all along no troubles at all.

[Kochikaran]

I am yet to come across even a single person who hasn’t had a pretty horrible experience with this scammiest internet age company of our times.
This is the sort of company which our father’s use as textbook example of everything wrong with present day internet-app based companies.
I once booked a zoom car for shopping with my wife in Hyderabad. The pick up from some godforsaken housing colony and the car, Swift Manual Petrol, was parked among 100s of other cars. It took my 5 mins to just spot the car. Then come unlocking the car which took 10 mins. And then comes the inspection. The car already had pretty visible scratches on the side.
I tried to upload the pics on the app but it won’t upload. Closed and restarted multiple times, did not upload. I had to skip it and move along to unlocking the car.
Car was trouble free and ran smooth. Dropped back at the location and was asked to upload pics of the car. And surprise surprise, this time the upload option magically starts working. I had to upload the pics with scratches and needless to say I was charged 4000 rupees fine for it.🤬
Oh and did I mention, all through the ordeal, I tried getting to their customer care to talk to a human who can understand my unique predicament, but to no avail.

[SID7115]

Originally Posted by AnnaRocks

ZOOMCAR & an Old XUV 500 - A rattling combo

Since the time Zoomcar introduced that Host program, there has been no end to such horrifying experiences.
Zoomcar may want to reduce their number of assets, but not at the cost of customer satisfaction.
On the other hand, even the hosts are fed up of Zoomcar's customer service and are taking off their vehicles from the platform.
Open YouTube and you'll find hundreds of videos complaining about their service

What can you attribute this to??

[subie_socal]

Zoomcar has had appalling service for a long time now. I've vowed never to rely on Zoomcar or Revv for an incident that happened with my sister when they rented a Tiago, where they had to shell out from the pocket for a scratch they didn't cause.

On contrary, I had a pleasant experience with IndusGO while I was in Chennai last month. The condition of the car they provided (A Swift AMT) was below average, but fine mechanically. The process of receiving and returning the car was a breeze. Very satisfied.

[nda992]

I stumbled upon this thread while reading the latest XUV 5OO experience..

So I went to page 1 (Circa 2013) where this service is first talked about. This was 10 years back & as the thread fast forwards in time, there is a discernible trend of quality going southwards.

In India, most of the products/services start off well but as the bottom line starts increasing (my guess), complacence sets in.
Ola, Uber, UC, Most of the RSA offered by Car dealers etc etc are known cases where a good model turned rogue within a short duration.

Any business model is made up of processes which need to be controlled/monitored with as much importance as when they started off. In military parlance we call it the SOPs & any deviation is NON NEGOTIABLE.
In fact, sticking to SOPs prove to be economical on the longer run due to less wastage, preventive maintenance, longer life & so on.

The management of these companies need a complete overhaul in order to win back the trust of the customers. I sincerely hope that there would be people on this forum who can get the message across...

[Goandiaries]

I think that zoomcar was doomed after COVID years. I used their rental cars since 2014 till 2020 occasionally. Remember my first trip, picking up a Ford Figo from Brigade millennium basement in Bangalore. They were with attendents then. Later in 2018 they had staff less pickup and drop! I used to wonder how they are going to verify damages only through photos. Over time I rented Hexa, Kicks, Polo, Scorpio, Brezza and they were all in good condition. Out of my 15 or so trips, never had any problem with their cars, except for a relatively dirty car once! Refunds used to be perfect, when you upload the fuel bill. Thankfully, didn't have an opportunity to use their car after COVID as I got my own car.

Another service provider I used in Bangalore was Drivezy. Over a period of 2 years in 2018 - 2020, used their cars mainly since they had one way drop off from airport and home. And it was quite cheap! Used to be less than 500 for 50km drive to airport. Cars were new and reliable. Suddenly in 2019 end, they removed the airport drives and never offered it again. I think the company is no more now.

Looking at the present scenario, I think it is getting difficult to deal with self drive car rentals!