They have just way too many issues. The entire experience is torturous and exhausting and kills the very purpose of taking a car and being on your own in a new place. Humiliating. Time-consuming. Unsafe. Lacks customer trust.
A short narration of the experience you are assured of going through -
If you need to hire a car for 12 hours -
Spend an hour to book -> an hour to get to the pick up location -> an hour to verify and record the car condition -> an hour to talk to the customer support for issues(there was no insurance in mine!) -> an hour at the time of dropping off -> an hour from drop off to your place -> many hours talking to the customer support justifying that the penalties they are levying are incorrect -> couple of hours writing posts like these.
In essence, you will waste more time and peace that you wish to save by renting a self-driven car.
Details of what happened:-
1.I picked a location for pick up but they changed it to something else without my consent. It was almost 20KMs away.
2.The location was in a garbage dump yard. Literally, in some godforsaken place. If you are a girl, this can be unsafe and risky. They have no way to check if the place is safe or not. Girls - Just DO NOT take Zoomcar, simple.
3.Car was dusty and dirty. They do not have any process to clean it I suppose. Can’t be so dirty otherwise. And it was clear they do not care.
4.They have a process that will need you to spend almost an hour to certify the car condition. If you are in a hurry or doesn’t want to spend that much time(who would want to?), be assured you WILL be screwed later. They keep throwing a message that you will be penalized if you do not go through the entire process thoroughly! Even paid staff will not spend so much time checking the car.
5.Insurance was expired and they encourage you to take the car without it. Is this even legal? They sent me a new one 12 hours later after multiple follow-ups. How come a system that is so automated does not renew insurance for 7 days after expiry? Insurance companies, we know, chase us until insurance is renewed. They probably ignore it until a customer catches it.
6.The customer support executive asks me to get the car cleaned. We hire car cleaners to clean our personal cars. They expect their customers to clean their cars. They think reimbursing the money for getting the car cleaned is a favor! They don’t understand the value of customers’ time.
7.The asked me to connect my credit card to get a Rs. 2000 waiver on any penalties for minor damages. But they NEVER gave me this
8.Had to call customer support multiple times(which gets enabled once the trip starts!) - all of them CONSISTENTLY is RUDE and UNCOUTH. They fight with you if you ask any further questions. What kind of training are they going through?
9.One decent CS exec called me and said he will credit 300 Zoomcar points for the bad experience. But this never happened.
10.After driving for a bit, I noticed that the brake pads are bad. Dangerous. Now how are you supposed to check this before taking the car? Now, if you report it, they will say it’s your fault and make you pay for the brake pads.
11.CS exec promised that the drop point will be changed to a safer place. On the day of drooping, when I called he simply says "Sir, park wherever you want. We will take 2000 rupees and 300/ hr late fee until we go pick it up. and he says he is helping me!
12.The pickup point was blocked when I was there to park it. Owner of the car pops up out of nowhere and makes me park it elsewhere. Took me almost an hour to close the process(upload pictures and what not)
13.Next morning I get a message that they are going to charge me rs. 2000 for some damage - they send me pictures that are different form what I uploaded - obviously some damage must have happened after I parked the car in a random location the owner made me to. The Rs. 2000 offer for linking credit card was just a trick. They don’t even know such an offer exists. I anyway didn’t want to use the offer when I know for sure there was no damage. the owner of the car was with me when I handed over the car. He unlocked it form his app to switch off the lights.
14.Customer support misbehaves again when I ask them to get rid of the charges. CS exec says "Main apni aankhon se dekh rahi hun. Main kya jhooth bol rahi hun?" - who talks in such a crude manner to a customer? So I should just shut up and accept whatever non-sense they utter?
15.I had to block my credit to make sure they do not take money unauthorized. Now I have to go through the pain of getting a new one issued.
16.After a few tweets, they waived this penalty but for what good? They wasted so many hours.
This company is run by someone who probably thinks Indians as customers cannot be trusted. You are guilty unless you prove yourself not - that’s how they function. The CEO needs to learn from Flipkart, Swiggy, Dunzo on how to win customers in India. Until then, shut the shop and not insult the customers anymore. And please do spend some peanuts training the uncouth customer support executives.