ParrotBill
Yo ho, yo ho, a parrot's life for me
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2005
Thought I would start a topic on Turo, the "AirBnb" for cars. I used this for my trip December 9-20, 2023.
You are renting a person's personal car, through an Agency that adds administration and payment handling, uses a required smartphone app, and provides a choice of insurance levels.
I found pricing without insurance to be about half the rates of trustworthy commercial car rentals, and less than half when including insurances.
There are fun cars to rent, and you get to pick the one specific car you want. Some listing are expensive, but most looked reasonable.
There are many choices in a big metro area like Orlando.
You must sign up for Turo and get your license uploaded and identify verified. You will have to post pictures of your license and a selfie holding the license for the owner to verify you the day before or day of rental. (This step was not clear with Turo, but I did validate it is required.)
You must pay close attention to details in the listing including where you will be expected to pick up and drop off the car. You might have to Uber somewhere to do that. I chose an airport pickup, where the owner left it in an economy lot. I took the shuttle bus, and located the car. Paid the parking fee to leave (Nobody told me this, but I did not argue it.) Returned the car there.
I remembered to ask about toll transponders, as Florida is full of toll roads and many are automated only. My car had a Sun Pass and they said they will bill me for usage after the end of my trip. The transponder is tape-affixed so I would not have been able to use my own.
Allow time in your schedule! Picking up was an hour. Dropping was a half hour. The shuttle bus runs about every 15-30 minutes and takes 10-15 minutes to get back and forth. You must complete a checklist in the app and take pictures of the car and upload to the Turo App both times. You must return with same level of gas. I recommend with your picture you include one showing mileage and gas level at pick up and drop off. Identifying damage was hard under street lights at night.
My car was a 10 year old Ford Mustang in good condition. But the old text menus of the entertainment system were tricky! it took a half hour to figure out how to sync my phone to hear my google navigation and get audio input set.
The owners communicated well and answered my questions.
There have been some reports of problematic owners, even canceling rentals on short notice. I would only use it in large markets with many cars so I had a chance of finding an alternate in case of a problem. And there's always Mears buses and Uber, which is what I did on my last trip.
Feel free to post more experiences, or ask questions of those who post theirs.
You are renting a person's personal car, through an Agency that adds administration and payment handling, uses a required smartphone app, and provides a choice of insurance levels.
I found pricing without insurance to be about half the rates of trustworthy commercial car rentals, and less than half when including insurances.
There are fun cars to rent, and you get to pick the one specific car you want. Some listing are expensive, but most looked reasonable.
There are many choices in a big metro area like Orlando.
You must sign up for Turo and get your license uploaded and identify verified. You will have to post pictures of your license and a selfie holding the license for the owner to verify you the day before or day of rental. (This step was not clear with Turo, but I did validate it is required.)
You must pay close attention to details in the listing including where you will be expected to pick up and drop off the car. You might have to Uber somewhere to do that. I chose an airport pickup, where the owner left it in an economy lot. I took the shuttle bus, and located the car. Paid the parking fee to leave (Nobody told me this, but I did not argue it.) Returned the car there.
I remembered to ask about toll transponders, as Florida is full of toll roads and many are automated only. My car had a Sun Pass and they said they will bill me for usage after the end of my trip. The transponder is tape-affixed so I would not have been able to use my own.
Allow time in your schedule! Picking up was an hour. Dropping was a half hour. The shuttle bus runs about every 15-30 minutes and takes 10-15 minutes to get back and forth. You must complete a checklist in the app and take pictures of the car and upload to the Turo App both times. You must return with same level of gas. I recommend with your picture you include one showing mileage and gas level at pick up and drop off. Identifying damage was hard under street lights at night.
My car was a 10 year old Ford Mustang in good condition. But the old text menus of the entertainment system were tricky! it took a half hour to figure out how to sync my phone to hear my google navigation and get audio input set.
The owners communicated well and answered my questions.
There have been some reports of problematic owners, even canceling rentals on short notice. I would only use it in large markets with many cars so I had a chance of finding an alternate in case of a problem. And there's always Mears buses and Uber, which is what I did on my last trip.
Feel free to post more experiences, or ask questions of those who post theirs.
