Rental Car Hacking?

[jvivlemore]

@Sidekicknicholas

I’ll sing the praises of Turo.

I was in LA for 36 hours for a job interview this fall and rented myself a McLaren MP4-12C for my stay, and it amazing…Turo process, the car itself, everything.

I contacted the owner via text to see if I could rent it since I was 29 (said it required 30 years old) - he was cool with it. Landed, grabbed an Uber to where the car was, spent 15 minutes going over the car, and then I was off. I put on about 180 miles in the 36 hours, eventually dropped it off at the “Turo” spots near the airport and was gone. Some of the best $250 I’ve ever spent.

Turo has dropoff spots? How did that work? You drop the car in a parking spot? What about the key? I assumed you met the owner for dropoff and pickup each time.

[Sidekicknicholas]

So when I met the guy to pickup the car it was in person … he spent like 10 minutes going over the car and its quirks; then set me free.

On the drop-off I was originally supposed to turn it in ~12 hours prior but he needed it near LAX for another rental he had the following day. He let me keep the car and had me deliver it so that he didn’t have to. There was a parking lot for some rental cars, some hotel valet, some permit parking, and some “TURO SPOTS”. The whole lot had an attendant at a guard shack, so I was able to leave the keys with him. I’m not sure how common this is with the attendant, but the owner also said he was able to remotely lock/unlock the car … so had he not been able to meet me on pickup I just had to call/text him and he could open up the car for me and the keys would have been in it.

All that said, being it was a Mclaren might have made things a bit different vs. renting a Kia Soul or something.

[LeGinge]

This is a specific LAX thing for TURO. Wish other airports had a TURO stand, but seems unique to LAX for now.