Digital Nomads

14 readers

1 users here now

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

communick@expats.zone

Advice on car rental/lease/storage in the US? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by kndb@alien.top to c/digitalnomad@expats.zone

3 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hey everyone. I’m a U.S. citizen. I’ve been working remotely since about Covid hit. And I’m loving it. I’ve been living in a few places outside of the US for 2+ years, and even though most of it is great I want to hear your advice on one little issue.

I’m co-renting an apartment with my buddy near Portland, OR. I mostly do it to keep my stuff in and to have a U.S. address to run my computers from, which I remote-access into. This works great.

But, since I left last time (about 1year and 8 months ago) I left my car in an outside parking lot at this apartment complex that we live in. Now that I got back, cold Portland weather had played a nasty trick on it. It is literally covered in moss, the battery is totally dead and tires are in a bad shape. So to fix it I will need to spend around $1k to get it back into a safe operating condition. And that not counting $35/mo that I’ve been paying to the apartment management for the parking spot.

So I’m wondering now, what do you guys do about getting a ride when you get back to US? This time I will have to spend over a month here. Do you rent a vehicle, lease, ride an Uber? Just curious how to solve the car issue now.

top 3 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] chinacatlady@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Lyft, Uber and sometimes borrow my parents extra car. I used to rent but it’s become too expensive in comparison to ride sharing.

[–] nihonnoniji@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Renting a car here in the US has become a nightmare.

We rented with budget a couple years ago and they gave us 2 broken cars, charged us too much, and charged us $1,000 in smoking fees. We’ve never smoked cigarettes. We had to dispute it with BBB and our bank to get the money back.

And then there’s a whole thing with Hertz reporting cars stolen even when they’ve been returned.

And I’ve heard nightmare stories from family about enterprise.

We used to do road trips and rented frequently, even did Zipcar a decade ago. I don’t know what’s happened in the past few years but it’s now pretty risky to use a rental company these days.

So yeah…avoid renting a car is what I recommend.

I live in a city with public transportation or I get rides from family (or I just walk).

[–] kndb@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Oh wow. Thanks for the heads up.