I am a member of the philly car share service because there are times when I do need a car. In 2007 I drove once. That is I borrowed a car from the car share service and drove it for a few hours on one hot day in 2007. In 2006 I think I drove twice - once to make an impulse purchase of an air conditioner in the middle of August and once to move. The service offers pick-up trucks and I like driving them more than I like dealing with U-haul’s trucks. My plan with the Philly car share is the basic plan. That is I only pay when I use the car. So in 2007 I paid less than $40. It includes insurance and gas so its a fantastic option for me. The plan includes no recurring fees.

Flex car became a new car sharing option in the city either in 2007 or 2006. I immediately signed up because I like having choices. But for a long while flex car didn’t have pods where I wanted them to be. I am lazy so if a pod isn’t within 10 blocks of me, I don’t bother with the service.

Recently Zip Car swallowed/merged with flex car. And Zip car has been bugging me via email and mail to sign up. Since I am a procrastinator I didn’t bother doing anything about it. I also didn’t like the annual fee and sign up fee that was required to sign up. I don’t like recurring financial committments . 

Finally I got fed up and emailed zip car asking them to waive all fees since I barely drive. I asked that if they were not willing to waive the fees I wanted to be taken off their mailing list and my info not sold to other organizations. I got a response pretty quickly stating that the fees couldn’t be waived and that my info would not be sold and that I would be taken off the mailing list. So that was that.

Yesterday I received a voicemail from someone in the corporate office stating that, yes! The fees could be waived because I used to be a flexcar member. In other words the rules could actually be broken. Shocking!

This is actually good for because L.A. has zip car pods. Philly car share is still a cheaper option in Philly however, but for any car needs I might have in L.A., I will be using Zip Car. Unless another car sharing option establishes itself.