Why Does Turo Suck in NYC?

There's nothing fun about renting a car the old-fashioned way. It's expensive, and it probably means you're taking an unnecessary trip to the airport. Turo, a peer-to-peer car sharing service that launched in Boston in 2010, seems like an attractive alternative: A car-owner posts their car for anyone to rent, with (relatively) cheap listings compared to traditional rental service prices, and rentable vehicles available for contactless pickup across the city.

But if you're a New York resident, in my totally biased opinion, Turo sucks ass and should be avoided at all costs.

My (admittedly one-sided) feud with Turo began this summer, for reasons that Turo itself declined to explain to me when I requested comment for this article. 

It was one of the first blistering June afternoons of the year, when I was supposed to be on my way to New Jersey in a stranger's 2017 Cadillac XT5. I'd booked the car weeks earlier via Turo, after a positive experience on the app back in April. The price was right; the trunk was roomy enough for camping gear; my friends and I were ready to hit the road. 

But when it came time to pick up the rental car, I found that it wasn't at its appointed spot: a side street in Bushwick, in front of an art gallery. I immediately called Turo customer service, and was pleasantly surprised when I was able to get a human being on the line. Maybe it was going to be OK!

Turo's customer service representative walked me through canceling my initial booking, and helped me rebook a new vehicle with a partial credit towards my next rental. It wasn't perfect, but I was desperate—heading to a music festival that started that evening, with four other friends relying on this car for transportation. We were ready to take a couple-hundred-dollar-L in order to beat traffic. Then, just as I went to rebook my rental, I received a notification: I was no longer eligible to rent a car through Turo in New York state.