An open letter to Getaround Owners about consumer choice

Jul 2, 2019 4 min read

We’ve heard your feedback about another company’s decision to prohibit carsharing on more than one platform of the owner’s choice — a decision that hurts consumers of the sharing economy most. I’d like to share our thoughts about this disappointing issue, and explain how we’re planning to help our owners navigate these changes.

Owners should be able to choose how, when and where to share

Since launching in 2011, Getaround’s mission has been to empower people to carshare everywhere. Owners like you are the engine that makes carsharing what it is today, so we’ll continue to provide you with the choice of how, when and where to instantly share your cars on our platform. We believe that competition between companies creates a better carsharing experience — Getaround has always chosen to embrace the challenges of innovation and improvement, rather than limit the choices available to our users and the broader carsharing community.

Getaround is the recognized leader in connected carsharing

We’ve seen a growing trend of owners choosing Getaround because of our focus on technology and the owner experience. Getaround Connect® — our patented device that pioneered instant carsharing six years ago — continues to drive owners to the Getaround platform. A dedicated team at Getaround has engineered and improved the device over four product generations to be safe, reliable and secure, enabling owners to share their car without a key handoff at any time of day.

In fact, we’ve known for some time that many owners use Getaround Connect® to carshare on other platforms — while we could have restricted its use, we felt it was better to support you, our owners, to continue sharing. We promise to keep improving on our other owner services that help make it easier to own a car on Getaround, and to build new ones. Today, we already help owners across the globe source convenient parking options, while providing end-to-end claims management, responsive customer service, and built-in insurance that protects both owners and renters.

The Go Time Guarantee™ will help owners maximize earnings

During recent conversations with all of you, we’ve heard concerns about the earnings impact of restricting owner access to multiple platforms. To support you and the sharing economy, we’d like to introduce the Go Time Guarantee™ to all of our owners in the United States:

  • Earnings Guarantee: For the rest of 2019, we’re offering a monthly Go Time Guarantee™ to support new and current owners. Use our new Getaround guarantee calculator to see your car’s guaranteed minimum monthly earnings specific to the make, model, year, location and month. For example, an economy sedan in Chicago could earn a minimum average $650/month guarantee, while a performance sedan in San Francisco could average $1,325/month minimum. These guarantees are exclusively for your earnings from completed trips, and any additional fees do not count against the guarantee. For July 2019, all owners will be automatically enrolled in the guarantee.
  • $1,500 Go Time Summer ‘19 Bonus: Eligible cars in qualifying ZIP codes could receive an extra $500 monthly bonus on top of their owner payouts for July, August, and September 2019. For the month of July, you’ll receive the full bonus if you’re eligible for the Go Time Guarantee™ from July 15-31, even if you weren’t eligible in the first half of the month. Use the Getaround guarantee calculator to see if you’re eligible. (Edit: The Go Time Summer bonus offer expired on 9/30/19)
  • Getaround Connect® Free Trial: We’re excited for more owners to experience instant carsharing with our world-class, patented Getaround Connect® device. To make trying our technology even easier, Getaround will waive all Getaround Connect® setup and monthly subscription fees through the end of 2019 for all new cars successfully added to Getaround during that period.
  • $200 Owner Referral Bonus: We know that the carsharing community is a close one, and we’d like to see more great owners like all of you list on Getaround. We’re excited to continue offering a $200 bonus for every new owner you refer.

Visit our Help Center for further offer details.

Getaround will improve the owner experience with new features in 2019
Inspired by your feedback, we’ll launch several new features to continue improving the Getaround owner experience:

  • Automatic fuel payments: Building on the capabilities of our latest Getaround Connect® technology, we’ll automatically charge renters for any fuel used and not refilled at the end of their trip, and automatically reimburse you for the cost of the missing fuel.
  • Cash for referrals: We’ll enable renter referral bonuses to be paid through your earnings instead of as promotional codes. This means you’ll earn even more by referring new renters to use Getaround.
  • User blocking: We’ve heard that owners want to prevent certain users from renting their cars, so we’ll enable you to permanently block any users you’ve distrusted from renting any of your cars a second time.
  • Car ratings: We’ll launch improved car ratings for both renters and owners to reward a great trip experience on both sides of the marketplace, increase user trust, and promote overall car quality.
  • Share on Uber: We’ll expand owner access to our successful Uber partnership, empowering owners meeting Uber’s qualification and eligibility criteria to additionally share their cars with Uber drivers by the hour and day to further increase utilization and earnings.

We support the freedom to share everywhere, and will always work hard to earn your loyalty by building a better carsharing platform, not by imposing anti-competitive restrictions on what owners can do with their cars. Our users are at the heart of everything we do, and drive our actions. To owners old and new, thanks for your continued support of the sharing economy. We hope you’ll join us on the journey forward by sharing on Getaround.

To your rights and freedoms,

Sam Zaid