Soo — so far as I know, this is still an entirely legitimate offering (we’ll see if they honor it early next year), but my takeaways so far from having it in San Francisco:
- I’ve probably made somewhere near half of the guaranteed amount so far – $3000 or so. Virtually extremely unlikely I’ll actually hit the $6000 without the guarantee.
- Don’t get a convertible. Or if you do get one, make sure you have a safe place to park it. Hell, maybe just make sure you have a safe place to park your car no matter what.
- Definitely get comprehensive insurance.
There are a ton of Getaround cars parked right around mine, but no convertibles. Presumably most of them get by just fine, but I’ve had some crazy stories with mine. It’s had the window smashed once, literally like two days after I bought it (my fault, had never had a car in the city before and left packages inside).
After that, I bought VIPER alarm decals to put on the windows, but no actual alarm. That seemed like it worked fine for several months that went by with no incidents…and then someone decided to slash the convertible top of my car.
I suspect this may just be a singular individual, since there were absolutely no incidents, then several all at once – long story short, the convertible top was slashed, and GEICO repaired it for just a $100 deductible ($2260 operation, thanks guys!).
Then just two weeks later, the car is totally slashed from the top again, and someone jumped in the car, slept in it through the night, stole the key (that has to be left in the car for Getaround), and killed the battery with the key playing the radio and heating up the car, presumably.
This majorly sucks, especially the getting the key stolen part – but what’s crazier is right before I take the car to Getaround for it to be repaired again, I happen to be up exceptionally late one night, and actually see the crazy dude sleeping in my car. I call the cops, and no fewer than 12 cops converge on him within five minutes, and then actually find the key on him, let him go with just a warning, and then let me know that just earlier that day they’d actually arrested someone else for breaking into the car as well.
Crazy. The incredible part of this story is that I got my key back, but the downside is this guy is still out there, and I’m *pretty* sure he’s specifically the crazy one going after my car.
This is the singular reason the car hasn’t been a really nice success – and so at this time, I can’t recommend a convertible, though your success may be radically different with a non-convertible. Also, the convertible isn’t nearly as fun as I thought it would be. Bummer.
Also, Uber is so radically cheap now ($4 flat UberPool rides everywhere with UberPlus) that it really may not make sense to have a car, period. I only got this baby to take on weekend trips, essentially, but it’s hard to do that when I have to keep the car on Getaround on the weekends anyway. Basically, if I do keep it, I’ll plan on taking it off Getaround after I get the $6000 guarantee, and then installing some crazy alarms, and using the thing for lots of fun, lots of the time. I think I’ll enjoy that plenty. We’ll see.