Zipcar UK Avis 3 294

I was looking for a van to rent for a few hours, to check availability of the cars you have to pay £15 registration fee! They not telling you they only exist in London. I live by Gatwick airport and nothing available in a 30 mile radius. Waste of £15 than they send me an email,my email address not registered under my name. Take a screenshot yes its under my name i have that email for about about 20 years, also i did ask for a refund,than they suspended my account as they still think my email address not under my name!
Who is this morrons?????????????? Take them out of the market immediately!

A SCAM PLEASE AVOID!

I recently rented a car from Zipcar and deeply regret not reading the reviews beforehand. From the very beginning, it was a terrible experience.

When I arrived at the vehicle, there were already two penalty tickets on the windshield. I immediately contacted customer service—even before confirming the rental—to report the issue. As it was my first time using the service, I expected guidance. Instead, I was told to email the company myself, which I don’t believe should be the customer’s responsibility.

The car itself was in very poor condition: filthy windows, untidy interior, and overall neglected. I ended up paying out of pocket to have the car washed, with the promise that I’d be refunded—yet I never received a single penny.

Things got worse after I returned the car. I was issued a large bill with additional charges, including a so-called “valuation fee” tied to a location I never visited. No PCN or portal reference number was provided to verify any of the claims.

To make matters worse, Zipcar accessed my account and withdrew funds without proper authorization. From my experience, it appears they invent charges—particularly ticket-related ones—to extract more money from unsuspecting users. This tactic seems to be a recurring issue mentioned by many reviewers.

I strongly urge anyone considering Zipcar to think twice. My experience suggests this company operates with deceptive and potentially unethical practices. It felt more like a scam than a legitimate service.

After countless calls, emails, and familiarizing myself with the relevant laws, I finally received a single email response regarding the violation ticket. Yet again, they failed to provide the PCN number. I had to start threatening legal action to even get a reply. Eventually, I managed to reach someone via email—though it wasn’t proper customer service by any means.

There is no real way to contact this company, and I strongly advise anyone facing similar issues to know your rights and involve a lawyer. This is a scheme designed to extract more money from customers through unauthorized transactions and fabricated charges.

They are stealing from their users. Avoid this company if you can.

Horrible customer service and they steal your money.

Charged a parking violation, yet waiting 14 days to tell me, which is outside of the dispute period and I had clear evidence to dispute the violation - staff simply entered my details incorrectly at the location.

This is just bad practice and this company should be avoided.

Robbing bastards!

I got a parking violation which is unlucky as it is, and they charged £30 EXTRA for “processing fees”. Cheers for that

Also as many mentioned, and it’s valid for all the cars, but especially my last trip the vehicle was absolutely filthy. The car was all banged up left right and center. The steering wheel was genuinely sticky!!

Went to a Tesco go grab sanitizing wipes to clean it up, and funny enough that’s where I got my parking ticket as well, how great is that

Just deleted my account. Will spend my money on an actual rental car from now on.

See ya

I am extremely disappointed with my experience using Zipcar. I recently received a parking violation notice dated nearly TWO MONTHS before I was actually informed. Despite never receiving any communication or warning about this ticket, £90 was withdrawn from my account without my knowledge or consent.

This situation has left me feeling angry and frustrated, especially as there seems to be no clear way to contact anyone at Zipcar to dispute the charge or get answers. If I had been notified when this ticket was first issued, I would have been able to resolve it or contest it right away. Instead, I was completely blindsided by an automatic deduction from my account.

Adding to the frustration, I believe the violation was issued in error. I booked a Flex car and parked it in the designated blue zone, which should not have resulted in any fine in the first place.

The lack of communication, the automatic withdrawal of funds, and the complete absence of customer support are unacceptable. I expect better from a company that markets itself as a convenient and reliable car-sharing service.

I do not recommend using Zipcar based on this experience — the lack of transparency and poor customer service have been deeply disappointing.

It's scams with our notifications or reminders or something about extra 39 fees it's scams

I received several parking violations from Zipcar, all in one email. It was suspicious so I checked the evidence of the parking violation on the councils website. The car in question is clearly not a zipcar, as it has none of the branding and is the wrong model. The licence plate is the same as real zipcar so clearly the plates have been cloned. I contacted zipcar by phone explaining this and have been told that a matter like this is handled by a team who only has a email adress and no telephone number for me to use. It has been a week since I contacted that email and have received no reply or confirmation that its being looked into. The amounts zipcar is looking to take from me is a considerably large amount. It feels as if Zipcar is making it intentionally impossible for me to get hold of anyone with the ability to look into this, perhaps with the hope that they receive my money and keep me in the dark about what Im able to do to address this. Its disgusting that no one has reache out to me after I provided evidence. I doont suggest anyone to sign up to become a new member of Zipcar, this is not the first time Ive received such poor service from this company that it caused me distress. Unfortunatley there is no real alternative to them (and that may be the problem) providing this kind of service but its not worth it to use them.

As Im editing this initial complaint , it is 18th of June , two days ago , 16th of June I received another parking charge notice from Zipcar. Once again it was a cloned numberplate that was the reason for the PCN, but Zipcar still tried to take the amount from my bank account.

zipcar refused my credit card and when i tried to use my wifes card they collected their 15 pounds and then told me i couldnt open the account in my name using my wifes card.
they didnt mention that the 15 pound isnt refundable until i had pressed them repeatedly for a refund. they claim its for admin costs but they didnt do anything but reject my application.
why do they take money before they accept the application?
why dont they tell you up front that the fee is non refundable?
totally disgraceful behaviour i wouldnt recommend them to anyone in fact i would actively discourage anyone else from dealing with these money grabbing sharks

If you’re lucky enough to have checked the reviews before using Zipcar, do yourself a favour and don’t. Their customer service is shocking and it’s much more expensive than traditional car rental without being too much more convenient. The van we rented was completely battered, dirty and was overfilled with oil. Because the cars are dumped around the city, they don’t get inspected whereas traditional rental companies will inspect their cars before each person collects and they will clean them and make sure they are presentable and roadworthy. Cool idea but awful execution and even worse value for money.

Changed my phone number, advised I have no access to old number( phone stolen and number cloned) sent off photos DL written note with face date etc as requested, 4 days later still no reply! Complete waist of time!

I applied to join Zipcar because I wanted to hire a car for the weekend and practice my driving (I got my licence three months ago). You have to join first and go through the application process, submitting your driving licence, a photo, etc. Then you’re asked to pay a £15 application fee. Nowhere in the process - after they accepted my licence and before booking - did it mention that you are not eligible for membership unless you’ve held your driving licence for at least one year. (That alone is disappointing - how am I supposed to get driving practice if I can’t hire a car? Do they really think someone is safer just because they haven’t driven for a year?) I only found this out after paying, when they rejected my application.
They took my money despite knowing I wasn’t eligible - the system accepted my licence without any warning, then they rejected my application and gave me nothing in return. When I contacted customer service, they just sent me copy-pasted responses saying the decision was final. The £15 fee is non-refundable no matter what. What a scam!
Edit: Dear Zipcar, Thank you for your reply. However, I don’t believe your response is accurate. There was no mention of the 12-month licence requirement during the application process. Your system accepted, vetted, and verified my driving licence WITHOUT flagging any issues, and then prompted me to pay the £15 fee.
I believe this omission is not due to any oversight on my part, but rather a lack of clarity in the information provided at the time of booking. If this requirement is so essential and will automatically result in a rejected application, it should be clearly communicated before payment is requested — not buried in a help centre link or in terms that aren’t made prominent during sign-up.

No invoice or receipt after 48hrs and 12 calls. Still no invoice or receipt. That's just ridiculous that they sent a receipt of 0£ after I paid 51£ and sent evidence to get the right receipt. Scammer.

Misleading Zipzone caused me to get a PCN. App showed McDonald’s car park as an allowed drop-off zone. Now Zipcar is trying to charge me £90 for parking they incorrectly marked. No reply to complaint either. Disgraceful.

If 0 stars was an option, that would still be generous. They took £15 “application fee” which is just a complete scam. As if you are rejected for any reason this is non-refundable and they lie to say that each applicant is thoroughly checked by the “team” aka algorithm.

Avoid using this too good to be true service and if you need quick easy car and van hire use trusted well established suppliers.

I reserved a van to move out of my flat and when I collected it noticed severe damage to the rear sliding door. I reported this to Zipcar but received no response, and needed to begin my trip to move out of my flat in that day. The door would not lock so I could not leave the van unattended which meant what should of taken a few hours to move out became a complete nightmare as someone needed to be with the van almost all times. I wasn’t able to complete my move out because of this and had to incur additional costs and time and complete later. Zipcar responded to my report a week later saying that I should of reported the issue at the time (which I did) and they would’ve sent me to another van (who knows how far away that would’ve been) - and offered an hour refund (I booked the van for 7 hours originally); their response came across like it was my fault for not reporting the issue and takes no responsibility for not upkeeping their vans to an acceptable standard. What are we paying for when a goods van cannot even be locked safely? What other damage are their vehicles carrying, are they even safe to drive? Zipcar seem to care very little. Disgraceful and a total liability, completely untrustworthy.

As a first-time customer, my experience with Zipcar has been deeply frustrating. I paid a £15 application fee, only to have my application cancelled because I supposedly “failed to respond” to a single email — which went to my junk folder. No follow-up was made via phone, SMS, app notification, or a second email.

They claimed my driving licence had expired (it hadn’t) and then refused to issue a refund, despite no service being provided and my account never being activated. Their 7-day document submission policy wasn’t stated in their terms and conditions, nor clearly communicated at the point of payment.

Customer service was polite but inflexible, and completely unwilling to take any responsibility for their one-channel communication approach. I’m now having to escalate the matter formally just to recover the fee.

Very disappointing for a company that claims to be customer-centric. Proceed with caution especially if you’re a new user.

I wish if there was Zero rating in the option so I would add one more zero that Zipcar actually deserve. Support representative was more threatening than being supportive. Got car for a very short distance to pick my kid as he wasn't able to walk due to injured leg. I dropped him to house and then trip couldn't END coz car was supposed to be park in zone only. It costed me extra. Finally dropped the car to end the pathetic experience and took bus again to my house.

Zipcar namely scammers in the name of most ineffective policies with staff threatening to get fine if car is not dropped in the zone. Save your pockets by using public transport and avoid being defrauded

Zipcar uses my driveway to illegally park their vehicles. It seems our address is listed on the app as one of the drop of points - we have never rented this space out to Zipcar and it should have nothing to do with us. Contacting customer service by phone and email several times seems to have led nowhere. It seems this issue could easily be fixed by removing our address from their database, and yet nothing seems to be happening after multiple complaints. Very disappointing.

I have been a regular Zipcar customer in the past but would certainly not use them again or recommend them.

UPDATE: I LEFT NOTHING IN THE CAR. I CAN'T PROVE A NEGATIVE! Terrible and unreasonable customer service! Zipcar claims I forgot something in the car, and as the next customer had the car out for 12 hours, Zipcar told me I had to call back at 10pm and get to the car then, or they'd charge me £65. I realised I didn't leave anytihng in the car and told them to throw whatever it was away. Which they did. But charged me £65 for disposing of a piece of waste that wasn't even mine. I won't be using them again.