Of course, the reality is it costs them $0 to begin with - and so they’re not just making me dance, they’re also dressing me up like a clown.ĭon’t take your customers for idiots.
This is a psychological trick to make me feel like Zipcar is going out of its way to enable my free onboarding. I also don’t appreciate the “£0 limited time only, normally £19 one-off joining fee” ploy. This was the first time I saw any currency signs - unfortunately just in the form of fees and savings - I still had no idea how much renting a zipcar actually cost. Now, I was given one of three choices: basic, smart, and plus. I entered my girlfriend’s London address - after all, that’s where we’ll need the car. To do so, I was asked to “Enter the address where you’ll need Zipcars nearby most often.” Okay. Why should I give you my credit card number? I mean, you wouldn’t even let me see any prices. I didn’t even indicate I wanted to make a booking yet.
We’re not dogs, of course, but when it comes to business-customer interactions, we also expect some form of give-and-take.įirst, Zipcar forced me to update my payment data.
If you just keep dishing out commands, your dog will eventually give up. You train a dog by asking him to do something and then giving him something as a reward. For the next 20 minutes, Zipcar made me jump through all kinds of hoops without giving me anything in return. I went to “My Account.” At the top of the page, I was greeted with, “it’s all about me!” As it turned out, quite the opposite was the case. After the login, I was immediately redirected to this page: “While I’m on the web app, might as well look at the map here,” I thought. Don’t make them enter their address when all you want is confirm their email. Lesson: Only ask your users for the data you need at each step. I can’t blame Zipcar for not remembering my password, but I can blame them for sending users from app to website and back, slow page loading times, and excessive data requirements - all before giving them what they’re looking for: Where are the cars, and how much do they cost?Īfter getting the reset email and going to Zipcar’s website, for some reason, I had to enter both my personal information and my new password. “I wonder if my account still works.” It did.įirst, however, I had to reset my password. Looking for a rental in London, I instantly jumped on the idea of Zipcar when my girlfriend told me they were available here. After I returned home, my account remained inactive for a long time - until yesterday. Unfortunately, Zipcar isn’t available in Germany. We bought furniture, we took weekend trips, we went shopping - some guys even moved dorms with it! All in all, we must’ve spent at least $2,000 on Zipcar between the eight of us. It was an on-demand rental you could book as available, and pay as you go. My fellow exchange students and I loved it. In my Zipcar settings, it says, “Member since Sep 3rd, 2012.”ĭuring my semester abroad in US, we had a zipcar on campus.