I’m renting a Turo car right now (from SEA) and have used Turo cars 8x over the years—far less frequently than I’ve gotten cars from the big companies, but I haven’t had any bad experiences that would lead me to swear off Turo altogether. It’s really only been useful on the West Coast and Hawaii though—attempts to use Turo cars in other places have not been successful, mainly due to uncompetitive pricing.

The car I have right now is a tiny Scion and I’m happy with it. Pickup/dropoff is super convenient, at a light rail station parking garage one stop away from SEA. There has been one maintenance issue: the ignition is a little chancy, occasionally requiring me to turn the key 15-20x to get the engine to turn over, although it always does. The owner flagged this when I picked up the car and was immediately available by phone when it happened the first time. (He did tell me at that time that he was going to cancel the next rental so he could get the ignition switch replaced, so sometimes that “canceling the next rental for a necessary repair” is actually true.) The only other bad experience I’ve had with Turo was back in 2016: a car owner in Hawaii deciding about two weeks before my trip that he needed the car for the first day of my 8-day rental and “could I arrive in HNL a day later?” Um, no. I was able to get another car from an el cheapo car rental company for a similar price though, so not a huge inconvenience in that instance. If that had happened this year, it would have been a massive inconvenience/expense. That experience taught me to be more careful about whom I rented from at Turo.

I was a pretty early adopter of Turo (back when it was called RelayRides) because a very old friend of mine has worked for the company since its earliest days, and I heard about it when it was founded. It’s not the best option for all situations, but it is a very good option for some. I was also an early adopter of AutoSlash and LOVE it; I am a constant proselytizer for that website. I occasionally make bookings with both a big company, tracking price with AutoSlash, and also with Turo to see which will win the price war.