Turo, Karshare and carsharing in general

[Sundayjumper]

That's a fair point by Jobbo, the last two years probably aren't a good forecast of how the next two years will go.

[Gavster]

Update:

BMW didn't sell as I only got a couple of vague enquiries around the price I was asking. Also haven't added a Zafira yet due to the uncertainty over Xmas time, as any Covid restrictions on travel might have had a knock-on effect of cancelling any bookings.

On the other hand, I had a couple of long guest bookings with the BMW over Xmas which meant nearly £900 in net income between 13th Dec and 5th Jan.

Turo is also winding down their recommended prices, they suggest that I should list my 4 series at £43 a day, which is absolutely crazy low, it wouldn't be worth using the platform at that price.

It feels like Airbnb, where the idea was to allow people to list their spare rooms and make a few extra quid, yet in reality it's a business proposition for hosts, where they want to see an ROI, rather than just being happy with a few quid from an empty room. Turo is also supposed to be about making a few quid from your car when you're not using it, however, the reality of managing the car's diary and weekends being peak time mean that it's hard to make Turo work on an occasional basis.

Still considering moving over to Karshare, but I've also heard rumours that their customer base in London is very low, also, people have more problems with claiming for damage to cars. Another weird thing is that Karshare has its own fleet of VW golfs which they list at a very competitive price, I find that odd to be competing against the platform.

January is looking fairly quiet, with just a couple of rentals booked in.

I'm a little bit cautious about growing this as a side-business, because the more cars you have, the more available you need to be for handovers, and ultimately I want more freedom. At the moment I can run one car and it only takes an hour or two of my time per week. The majority of rentals are at weekends, so I might have to do a handover on a Friday evening or a Sunday afternoon, but it's very low maintenance. With two, three or four cars, there will always be handovers at weekends and the admin of answering messages will also increase. I.e. my time involvement will directly scale in proportion to the business itself, which isn't a very good model for scaling a side hustle, unless I wanted to go full time. Unfortunately, full time on Turo would be seven days a week.

I'll still look at adding a Zafira in time for easter bookings and summertime, but otherwise, I'm not feeling compelled to grow this any further than that.

[Gavster]

Now that January has finished it's been six months since starting on the app and my total income from Turo has been a few quid under £4k. The car has taken on around 13k miles in that time.

Jan looks massive because there was a 10 day rental which ended on Jan 3rd, so that's where the income falls on the chart, despite being largely a December rental

[Gavster]

February has been dire. Income for the month so far £170 with repair/maintenance costs at £240. Also had the rear windscreen smashed whilst out on a rental, so had to go through the insurance hassle of getting that replaced, leaving me with a rattly boot lid.

The big learning this year has been how to manage customers when they damage the car. It's incredibly easy to keep them happy during a rental, and my 100% positive feedback is usually cited as a reason people hire from me which is awesome. However, it's been a real learning process to discover how to manage the guest and very directly tell them what's going to happen about repairs when shit goes wrong. Usually, guests come to me with the damage and offer to fix it, and then I negotiate with them about how to fix, but it always comes back to bite me on the ass. It's not a negotiation, it's a simple process, they leave the car with me, I get a quote, they pay. We both have excesses to pay, which is a PITA, mine is £250, and theirs is £2,000 (unless they paid extra) which is why they will try everything to negotiate a cheaper repair.

Still considering adding a Zafira in time for the spring/summer holiday seasons.

[Broccers]

Cant win every month Gav. Least you're building in the right direction. A banger might well show you the way forward

[Jobbo]

There’s a £250 excess payable by you if they damage it?

[Gavster]

Cant win every month Gav. Least you're building in the right direction. A banger might well show you the way forward

Cheers buddy, you're right about going in a good direction. Everything is set up to have a good spring/summer season, and my prices are already hiked up for the holidays. And I now know how to deal with cunts

[Gavster]

There’s a £250 excess payable by you if they damage it?

If it goes through Turo's insurance, then yes, unless I pay an extra 10% commission on my earnings to waive that excess (plus a few other benefits like loss of earnings up to £300).

Any damage has to be logged in the app, and if the repairs appear to be under £2k they recommend resolving directly with the customer within a certain timeframe. That process still involves uploading quotes to the app etc, so they actively oversee the resolution pathway and offer to step in if you can't resolve, but leave you to do the actual negotiation.

[Jobbo]

Surely you should be able to charge the hirer for the £250 excess, and they're the ones who should pay for the excess waiver to reduce it to nil?

[Gavster]

I know that would make sense, but as far as I'm aware Turo will charge both the host and the guest in the event of Turo needing to handle a claim. I think they treat it like a processing fee for the host, rather than a regular excess.

[Sundayjumper]

That very conspicuously excludes mechanical & interior damage. What happens there ? A tin of paint over the seats, or continuing to drive the car despite a low oil warning ?

[Gavster]

That's seperate, the guest is fully responsible:

"Mechanical or Interior Damage. The contractual limitation of liability available under the Premier, Standard, and Minimum plans doesn’t apply to damage caused to the interior of the Vehicle or mechanical damage caused during the booked trip, not normal “wear and tear”. (Note that wear and tear does not include cracked glass or chipped glass caused by rocks or other debris.) Regardless of which protection plan the primary Guests chooses, the primary Guest is financially liable for the full cost of the repairs or replacement, as well as Related Costs, for interior damage or mechanical damage caused during the booked trip."

https://support.turo.com/hc/en-us/artic ... -UK-guests

[Gavster]

Seriously I am so fucking done with this car.

Since that guy smashed the wheel last November, it's been non-stop problems every month. Driveshaft coming out. Wheel bearing. Oil leak. Swirl flaps. Another oil leak. Exhaust coming off. Plus there's still a noise coming form the back end. And a guest has just messaged me this:

[Sundayjumper]

Oh. Water leak hopefully ?

[Mito Man]

Yeah looks like coolant, weird spot for it in the back of the engine though.

[Gavster]

It’s definitely diesel getting the car recovered back to my place now

[Jobbo]

That's diesel dripping out below the car? Hopefully an easy fix then.

[Sundayjumper]

This thread sounds very similar and the conclusion was simply a hose that commonly wears through:

https://www.bmwland.org.uk/index.php?th ... pump.1840/

[Gavster]

Thanks for that - hopefully it's nice and simple. The car is with the garage next door, they'll have a look at it this afternoon.

I've decided to sell the car, I'm going to auction it on eBay. There are more bills around the corner as the car is leaky and tired now, it gaining scratches here and there and getting driven into the ground. The guest who had it last week last used it in August 2021, he said it no longer drives nicely, like someone's been ragging it. I reckon it needs multiple jobs doing, and even if I got those done, I'd still be nervous about loaning it to someone for a long journey like a family holiday. Better to take the hit of auctioning it, rather than spending a load of money for work on a tired car. Gonna polish the turd and put some stunning shots on eBay and move on. Once it's gone I'll decide whether to put another car on Turo. It's too late for easter now, but the summer June-September season would be worth targeting, especially with my perfect 5* reviews over 40 trips on Turo.

I'll reconcile everything once it's gone, but my initial assessment is that there's probably been very little profit over the last 8 months on Turo, as income has been slightly lower than projected and there was around £1k in repairs in the first ~6 months, which is more than budgeted. Depreciation will be a fukcer, but at least the used car market is still strong. In another 6-12 months it could have dropped, so now might still be a decent time to get out.

[Rich B]

The house always wins...