Thinking of a Car subscription?

Don't sign up without due diligence first!

There's more than meets the eye

My story

Looking for a new car

It was coming time to find a new car and I was exploring different financing/leasing options. I found this neat car subscription and rental service online. It was put on by a local dealership near where I live. There wasn't much information on their website(this is important later), so I called and set up an appointment to find out more about the program.

The Program

Once I was in person, I was able to learn about the details of the program. The value proposition is that members can pay a single monthly fee as an alternative to car ownership or leasing. Costs like maintenance, insurance, and taxes are all included. During this appointment, I was able to get a printed spreadsheet of the prices of each tier. Weirdly, the prices were marked "pre-tax". I thought taxes were included in the price, but oh well what's an extra 8-10%?

Actually signing up

I decided that I wanted to join the car subscription service and reserve my first car. For the first month, since it included my Birthday, I decided to go one tier above what I could normally afford. Luckily, members can switch between different tiers. I could comfortably afford the first 2 tiers. I also put down a subscription "activation" fee - sort of like a down payment - that was nearly 2 months worth of the normal subscription cost. I could have put $0 down but, by paying the upfront money, I lowered the monthly cost. I figured I'd save money in the long run.

The tax is how much?

When I went to agree on a price for that month I got to see the post-tax price. To my surprise it was 30% higher than the prices I was initially given. Given that new information I could now only afford the lowest tier of the subscription, but I still liked the idea of the service so I went ahead. I figured that I could switch to the lowest tier for the next month.

All "Inclusive"

I also was presented with the classic car salesman trick of an extra option at the last second. You remember how the monthly price "includes" things like insurance? It does, but there a premium of a couple hundred dollars, or I could have a deductible of 5x what my normal insurance has.

Why there wasn't any info

Now I'm starting to understand why the website has so little information. If they were transparent about what they actually charge, people would realize that it's a bad idea.

Where'd the tier go?

Later that month I texted the support line to ask how much the after tax cost of the lowest tier would be and found out that they got rid of it. The only tier left was the one I thought I could afford before finding out about the massive tax cost. So now I can no longer afford to use this service.

Hey, could I get my money back?

I made my decision to pay the down payment based on 2 key pieces of information: 1 - the price sheet I was given is close to what the actual cost will be 2 - the lowest tier, which I could still afford and was still presented on the website, was actually available. Both of these things turned out to not be true. Had I known these things, or have even had any way of finding those things out from the information presented, I wouldn't have payed the down payment and I would have just payed for the one month. I asked the people that ran the service if I could get my activation fee back and pay the higher rate for just the one month.

I'm not getting my money back

This is a classic story of buyer(or perhaps subscriber beware). I realize that I should have taken more time with this decision and I'm chalking this up to a very expensive lesson on dealing with car dealerships. They told me that they couldn't refund my fee. Darn.

Oh and there's more bad news

So, now that I've found out that I can't afford to keep this subscription, I need to cancel. Turns out there's a cancellation fee which they were kind enough to waive. Oh and one more thing: you know how you payed a few grand to drive the car for a month? We meant calendar month, not 30 days. But you DO have to give 30 days notice to cancel. So not only have I payed a stupid amount of money to essentially rent a car, I only had it for 20 days.

Should you sign up for the service?

Yes! IF you have more money than you know what to do with and don't care that your getting a terrible value for a service that is not at all what it claims to be. If, however, you want to actually get something that's worth the money your paying, then I would suggest a normal lease or a used car. In my case, it would be cheaper to buy the car, pay the sales tax, and add it to my insurance.

Disclaimer

This story is not about any particular company or service. This story is written in past-tense to avoid confusion, and because I'm too lazy to figure out the subjunctive. I'm just giving an example of what could happen if someone were to sign up for such service, which may or may not exist. I wanted a place to put my hypothetical story so I just grabbed an available domain name.