CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh

City car club is no more

(16 posts)

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  1. SRD
    Moderator

    To be less apocalyptic, I should have said 'city car club is now enterprise car club', but to be fair, we weren't sure what had happened at at.

    MR SRD had noticed a gradual rebranding and Google comes up with this:

    "There’s a significant shift in the car club operator landscape as Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the world’s largest vehicle rental business, announced the acquisition of City Car Club, Britain’s biggest independent car sharing company."

    Bit odd that we've seen nothing media nor from them, although we're members.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  2. Stephan Matthiesen
    Member

    @SRD I got a member email about the takeover, about 2 or 3 weeks ago.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  3. unhurt
    Member

    Hrm. I have been thinking about selling my car and joining but I suppose I'll wait and see what they do with it first.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  4. Stickman
    Member

    Interesting, as this month's council Finance Committee has a report recommending extending the deal with City Car Club

    Posted 7 years ago #

  5. SRD
    Moderator

    I recall a community council member with connections to the car rental sector whinging on and on about the car clubs getting council subsidies and parking spaces etc. if there are subsidies (as compared to a deal for council employees to use their vehicles for work/discounted membership), then it's a lot harder to justify when run by enterprise.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  6. LaidBack
    Member

    On a more minor note:
    They are lined up to be involved with SEStran Commuter Challenge so need to see how this affects things.
    First thing is that it's good news for printers an designers as we have to reprint a correx panel with new logo.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  7. donnymurdo
    Member

    Hi guys, I'm a member of the, now Enterprise Car Club, in fact I've been there from the start when it was Edinburgh Car Club. The take over was announced a long time ago. The car club have rarely made a big fuss on the media so it is no surprise that this has caught a few folk out. All members have been informed. The manager for Scotland when I spoke with him at a promotional stand in Ingleston months ago said he was excited and optimustic about the take over.

    All the booking systems in the short term will stay the same.

    The only difference I have noticed is location of the new cars being introduced. To the outsider it apoears random but they have in the past had a strict criteria for placement of new bays for cars.

    There is an increading number if electric cars in the fleet with a maddively reduced milage charge which reflects the lower cost of fuel and dare I say it the reduced amount of energy electric cars use.

    Having said all this , the vans have been a fantastic addition to the fleet. You can get up to 11 bicycles (easily) into the back (13 if you are willing to spend half an hour carfully slotting the last two in).

    If you are about to sell your car and you are thinking of joining the club then I think you will not tegret it. All the members I have spoken with at the AGM in Edinburgh each year all say they love it.

    Car clubs are definitely a roll in the right direction. Of course you'd be better cycling everywhere and using public transport but if you have to drive then drive one of these.

    Happy Driving

    Posted 7 years ago #

  8. SRD
    Moderator

    @donnymurdo - do you get a commission or something?

    Posted 7 years ago #

  9. rbrtwtmn
    Member

    Am also a member - to back up other messages, we were fully informed about this change and I've not noticed anything substantial change in my experience of the club yet.

    I have no (intelligent/thought out) views on the longer term future or what this means for that. Perhaps others have??

    Posted 7 years ago #

  10. jonty
    Member

    As a member I too was informed quite a few months ago. I was a bit surprised as I'd basically assumed it was a nonprofit or something, given how much public space is devoted to their cars.

    Is it a franchise system or has the council basically just promised a whole bunch of parking spaces to an international corporation?

    Posted 7 years ago #

  11. fimm
    Member

    We are also members, and also were informed some time ago.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  12. SRD
    Moderator

    dunno. we've searched all the possible places email might be. maybe we opted out of this sort of email contact when we joined? puzzling, but glad others were aware.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  13. jonty
    Member

    If you care in the slightest - looks like first I heard was an email on April 1st 2015 (maybe you ignored it based on the date?!) entitled "Important message from City Car Club’s Managing Director." Do you get the monthly newsletter? It's been mentioned a few times in that too - perhaps you did opt out.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  14. Stephan Matthiesen
    Member

    I'm not sure what to think about it. My spontaneous feeling was also rather reserved, but then I don't really see a rational reason for expecting problems.

    The City Car Club (as I understood) was a commercial company already, not a charity or something. Now a medium-sized company is bought by a large one, that happens all the time and I'm not sure why this should specifically be an issue here.

    Do they really get "subsidies", or is it just a commercial deal between company and council? The council benefits and saves money as they reduce the demand for parking. A lot of other council activities are also contracted out to commercial companies. Cycle lanes are also built by big international construction consortia, not the local council workman.

    In any case, providing hire cars is not a council service, but a commercial activity.

    I can't see any ethical issues here other than one may not like big companies in general.

    A practical concern may be that the service or usefulness suffers, but why should it? Enterprise has been successful in car hire so they should be able to handle hiring out cars (I would be worried if it was bought by L'Oreal to park their money or something without actual interest / competence in the business).

    So I'm not sure what the fuss is about at the moment.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  15. SRD
    Moderator

    Sorry if I made a big deal about nothing. We saw that the city car club parking near us had been removed and were confused. Because we didn't know enterprise had a car share scheme and had bought them out, we didn't know what was going on.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  16. acsimpson
    Member

    I'm not a member, primarily because their rental bays have always been too far from where I live. I am a semi-regular enterprise customer though and have nothing but praise for their customer service, often going out of their way to be helpful.

    I don't know what deal the council has with them but don't see why the car parking spaces they are offered would be any different to another commercial deal such as JC Decaux's advertising spaces. They presumably make a profit from the advertising deals but I have never heard of it described as a subsidy.

    As Stephan says they are also providing us with a service by keeping even more cars off the road.

    Incidentally I am fairly certain that all their branches are owned and operated by Enterprise (plc?) rather than being a franchise model.

    Posted 7 years ago #

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