March 28, 2024

Ford and Zipcar Join Forces

But the Ford Motor Company is taking the view that drivers who rent from Zipcar by the hour just might be potential customers down the road.

Ford and Zipcar are expected on Wednesday to announce an unusual partnership in which the Detroit automaker will supply its vehicles to Zipcar locations on 250 college and university campuses in the United States.

The two-year program will provide Zipcar with up to 1,000 Ford Focus sedans and Escape sport utility vehicles for students who prefer short-term vehicle rentals to the trouble and expense of owning their own car.

In addition to providing the cars, Ford will offer the first 100,000 university students who sign up for Zipcar a $10 discount on the network’s $30 annual membership fee. In addition, Ford has agreed to subsidize $1 of the hourly rental rate for the first one million hours of use on any of its vehicles. The typical Zipcar rental costs $8 to $9 an hour.

The program, which starts Thursday, is a significant step in the expansion of Zipcar, based in Cambridge, Mass., which went public with an initial stock offering early this year, and in August reported strong revenue and membership growth that exceeded Wall Street expectations.

Zipcar has been a fixture in urban areas like New York, Boston, San Francisco and Washington for several years, and has been gradually moving into smaller markets like Sacramento and Providence, R.I. Recently, it has been seeking to rapidly expand its presence on college campuses.

The alliance with Ford will raise Zipcar’s presence substantially in the student market — and get more American cars into Zipcar’s fleet. Nearly all of Zipcar’s current models are foreign nameplates like the Honda Civic, the Mini Cooper and Toyota Prius.

Currently, Zipcar has more than 600,000 members in the United States, Canada and Britain.

The impetus for the new partnership began two years ago at a transportation forum when William Clay Ford Jr., Ford’s executive chairman, met Scott Griffith, Zipcar’s chairman and chief executive.

In an interview, Mr. Ford said he had become interested in car-sharing networks as part of the long-term answer of how congested cities could solve transportation issues without simply adding more vehicles.

As an ardent environmentalist, he said he could appreciate how short-term car rentals could ease fuel consumption in cities already overcrowded with privately owned vehicles.

The auto industry has been pouring vehicles into regular rental car fleets operated by big companies like Hertz and Avis, for years.

Mr. Ford said that Zipcar offered an opportunity for the automaker to reach a new demographic of younger, college-age drivers who otherwise might not try a Ford product.

“We are looking at the future of transportation more holistically,” he said. “We shouldn’t be threatened by these different business models. We should embrace them.”

Zipcar owns more than 8,000 cars and offers its members more than 30 different models. But Mr. Griffith said the deal with Ford was a powerful endorsement of its market and its services.

“Having Bill Ford and the Ford Motor Company validating Zipcar as a business model and as an emerging transportation brand is a big step for us,” Mr. Griffith said.

Zipcar has bought 650 Ford cars and S.U.V.’s to start, and will start making them available for rental within two weeks.

The membership and rental subsidies offered by Ford could entice frugal college students to give the brand a try.

“The cheaper it is, the more I would be willing to use it,” said Tyler Harangozo of Windsor, Ontario, an incoming freshman at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Mr. Harangozo was among a crowd of Wayne State students looking over the Ford Focus during orientation activities on Tuesday.

He said he expected to commute to school by bus, but appreciated the option of renting a Zipcar for a few hours if needed.

“I can’t rely on public transit to get all around Detroit,” he said. “I’ll probably need a car once in a while.”

Zipcar memberships are available to anyone who has had a driver’s license for two years and a good driving record.

That makes it especially appealing for people under the age of 21, who often cannot qualify to rent a car from a traditional daily rental agency. At Zipcar, even a teenager can become a member.

Rental fees include insurance coverage, and Mr. Griffith said background checks had generally weeded out poor drivers from its membership rolls. “If you have a D.U.I. or high-speed driving violations, you won’t be able to drive one of our cars,” he said.

Ford sees the program as an inexpensive means to introduce younger drivers to its products, particularly the compact Ford Focus. The cars are equipped with Ford’s Sync infotainment and communications systems, and they are among the most fuel-efficient models in the company’s fleet.

“It’s a great way to reach these first-time drivers,” Mr. Ford said. “And the data shows that the No. 1 reason people leave Zipcar is to buy a vehicle, and that they are heavily influenced by what they have driven as a member.”

In the past, Mr. Ford said, his company did not have the right models to attract college-age drivers.

“The Focus is the right product at the right time to reach college kids,” he said. “We don’t know where car-sharing is headed, but Ford wants to be a part of it.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=1d5c4373d607bf87b40af64a7b5844c3

Bucks: Take My Money, Please

This is a story about how a company can manage to turn away someone who wants to give it his money.

Actually, two companies. Here’s what happened.

A week or so ago, I received some mail from Chase promoting its Continental Presidential Plus MasterCard. Normally, I throw this sort of thing away without even opening it. But I live near Newark Liberty International Airport, a Continental hub, so I try to fly the carrier whenever I travel. I was curious.

The Presidential Plus card is the fancier of the two Continental cards Chase offers. (The other is the OnePass card, which is nice, but doesn’t have the same number of perks as the Presidential Card.) It includes access to Continental’s and United’s airport lounges, priority security lines and elite status with hotel and rental car companies. And that’s not to mention early boarding, free checked bags and 1,000 frequent flier miles for every $5,000 I charge on the card.

All in all, it’s a nice collection of amenities. I never fly enough in a year to attain any elite status, but with a card like this, I would get some of that treatment.

Normally, the Presidential Plus card charges an annual fee of $395, making it a competitor to American Express’s Platinum Card (which charges $450 per year). That’s a bit steep, but I was being presented with a special offer in this mailing: If my application were accepted, the first year’s membership fee would be waived.

That got my attention.

I figured this was one of those times where I had little to lose. I mean, why not get the card, if only for a year? For me, that’s three or four flights (maybe more) where I can relax about security lines, hang out in an airport lounge, board early and get a room upgrade when I check into my hotel. Fabulous.

And when the year is almost up, I can cancel the card and feel clever for having gotten something for nothing. Or, after a year of privileges and perks, I can decide I can’t live without it and pay the membership fee for a year two (which, clearly, is what Chase and Continental are hoping for).

I set the offer aside as I sorted through the rest of my mail. This weekend, I thought, I’ll apply.

The weekend came and I pulled out the sheet I had saved from Chase. There was a Web address to apply, continentalpresplus.com. I typed it in.

“Thanks for your interest in the offer we have sent to you. Please provide the required information below so that we can locate your offer,” the site said. Then there was a blank entry field next to “12-digit invitation number.”

What 12-digit invitation number?

I looked at the piece of paper I had saved. It didn’t have any codes — just the Web address for the site. I then — if not physically, then mentally — slapped my forehead: I had thrown away the rest of the mailing. The number must’ve been in there. There had been a dozen pages or so and, distracted by other things, I thought it all looked like marketing malarkey so I just kept the cover letter.

So that was stupid. But no big deal, I thought. I’ll just call up Chase and get my code.

I called Chase Credit Cards and explained my situation. The person at the other end had no idea what I was talking about. She suggested I go visit my Chase branch. I asked her if she actually knew if they could help me, or was this what she says when she doesn’t know the answer to something. She was refreshingly candid. “That is exactly what I recommend, sir.”

It was a Saturday and I didn’t have a lot going on, so I went over to my local branch. I sat down with a Chase representative and told him my story. He asked me to type in my Social Security number to pull up my profile.

By the way, my profile at Chase is not thin: I have two checking accounts there, a savings account, a Chase Visa credit card and a mortgage with them. I’m all over its databases. While I’m at it, I also have a Continental OnePass account.

But my man at the Chase branch pulled up nothing on my profile related to the Presidential Plus offer. He made a face. “Let me call my friend in the credit card division,” he said.

A few murmured sentences and he hung up. “Sorry. She can’t do anything for you either,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s impossible for us to track the offers back to customers.”

That’s too bad, I said. After all, here I am, asking to apply for this credit card, and I can’t because I lost the piece of paper that had some numbers and letters on it.

“Yeah,” the Chase rep said. “It is frustrating. What’s even more frustrating is that even if your friend got the same offer, you couldn’t use his code, as each code is unique and linked to a specific individual.”

This was amazing. “So if each code is linked to a specific identity,” I said, “why can’t you find mine? Surely there’s a database somewhere that says, ‘Sam Grobart equals ABCXYZ1234’ or something, right?”

“I know,” he replied. “But I can’t. But there is an online promotion right now for the Presidential Plus card. Would you be interested in that? You get a $95 statement credit when you get the card.”

Unfortunately, $95 is not $395. The Chase rep agreed that this was true. I didn’t want the card that much, I explained, particularly because I was now aware of a much better offer — an offer that had been sent to me, even.

“You could try calling Continental,” he said.

I thanked the Chase rep for his time, went home and called Continental, not really expecting much.

Sure enough, a representative from Continental told me the airline had no way of tracking the offer back to me. “You know, we may send out another mailing next quarter,” she told me. “If you’re included in that one, you may see this offer again.”

“And for our departing contestants we have some lovely going-home prizes. Johnny, tell them what they’re getting.”

So with this story in hand, I contacted a Chase spokesman, Paul Hartwick. I explained my situation, informed him that I was going to write about this and asked him if it was really possible that, in 2011, a promotional offer from two multibillion-dollar companies could actually hinge on a single piece of paper, as if it were a Golden Ticket from Willy Wonka.

Mr. Hartwick agreed. “Our advisers have the ability to look at offers that have been received by a customer,” he wrote in an e-mail. “In your case, we simply failed to do so and for that, we are sorry.” He informed me that someone would be contacting me to solve this problem.

I thanked Mr. Hartwick for his attention to this matter and his candor, but I also asked him a question: What if other people had this problem and they aren’t writing about it for The New York Times? What should they do? Mr. Hartwick suggested that the matter be taken to a supervisor and escalated beyond that if necessary.

Later that day, I received a call from Chase Credit Cards’ executive office (a higher level of customer service that you can learn more about in this post from The Consumerist) informing me that they were looking into my problem and would get back to me within a day or two. I am awaiting further action, amazed that The Case of the Missing Promo Code is proving so hard to crack.

Have you had a similar experience? Tell us in the comments section below.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=cd3daf3675310af4240f31ad0a8f26db