Originally Posted by
Jon of Brooklyn
This was my fifth time renting with Silvercar; unfortunately, while I'll consider it in the future, it may be my last. (I've rented it twice out of downtown Brooklyn and twice out of LAX.)
The Boston location in particular is a bit tough, because it's a 10-minute drive away from the car rental center, to which you have to take a shuttle from the airport anyways. So the convenience factor isn't really there. (This may be particular to my situation, but I also had trouble getting a hold of the rental agent, which meant that I was waiting at the car rental center for an additional 20 minutes after arriving. That may be a challenge of their lean staffing model.) On the other hand, they paid for an Uber/Lyft to take me directly to my terminal when I dropped the car off. All in all, I found the experience a bit like they were flying by the seat of their pants, not a seamless process of getting customers from the airport to the Silvercar rental center and then back again.
My real gripe, though, is that the value proposition seems to be going away. The discount for holders of the CSR went from 30% to 20% (which I suppose was inevitable), and as other posters have noted, you often end up with high-mileage cars. I also was (unpleasantly) surprised to see that the fuel surcharge is $9.95, not the $5 anymore. And while they used to only charge you for the tolls you incur, now there's a one-time $4.95 fee for using the transponder. That seems out of character for a company that sold itself as taking the hassle out of rental cars. Sure, it's great to get an Audi, but at least for me, the things I liked about Silvercar are the lack of add-on fees (i.e., transparent pricing), comparable pricing to a legacy rental company, without sacrificing significantly on convenience. I'm not sure I see that Silvercar bring that when compared to, say, National (heretofore my go-to when there's no Silvercar available).
One thing that remains good about Silvercar is that there's no additional fee for adding an additional (qualifying) driver.
Have other folks experienced similar things?
Obviously I can't speak to location specific issues, and I do wish they were on location, or at least handed off the car at the airport and then THEY took an Uber back to the location... that would avoid the awkward chats about why I'm there and what I'm doing and blah blah blah. But, it's still really hard for me to beat their price for that class of car. Using my CSR card and the Visa Infinite benefit I can do a 8 "day" rental (Pick up morning of Oct 19th, return morning of Oct 26th) for $388.55 total! (So about $48/day). I know what car I'm getting, it has enough pick up and go for busy freeway traffic, XM radio (love listening to the chill station), and built in Sat Nav so I'm not looking at a little screen or having to use my cell phone. With National (and without promo code, I'm sure I could hunt around for one, but SilverCar's is clear and just works with any location and car) I guess the Luxury would be similar (Cadillac XTS or similar) and that would be $538, and I'm not sure that has XM or build in Sat Nav. That's $150 more which means I would need to find a promo code for almost 30% off to just get the price the same. To me, as long as SilverCar keeps coming in with a daily rate lower than the other guys and continues to offer Sat Nav built it, I'll deal with their off site locations and maybe slightly increasing extra fees for fuel or tolls. (Though man they totally should bring you the car, have you make a few clicks on your cellphone, and then let you leave directly from the airport while they take an Uber back, that would be awesome... hell, probably worth an extra $9.99 service or something)