Car Club - anyone a member can give me advice?

[oysterpots]

(Posted in Ethical Living too)
Our knackered VW Golf broke down last week and is going to cost about £550 to fix (it's about 16 years old I think).

DH and I are in talks about whether to fix it and risk more expensive repairs down the line (we really have no money), or to join the City Car Club scheme.

We live in a major city, a 20 minute walk to the centre, both walk to work, both have bikes, live 2 minutes from a high street with veg shop, aldi, deli, newsagents etc.

I'm thinking we'd do any major shops with a supermarket delivery, would use the car club to visit family and friends, and I think we'd end up saving a bit.

But it would be interesting to hear any tales, positive or negative, of your experiences with the car club. There are 4 cars in our area so I don't think there would be too much of a problem with availability.

DH is worried that we'd try it, then decide we need our own car, and have to buy someone else's clapped out car as our own would have been scrapped!

There was an article about this in last weekend's Guardian, basically the guy wasn't too impressed. But I think he was being quite demanding (he tried to book it for just 1/2 hour, for instance, and that's a pretty tight time window).

No, we have City Car Club. Looks cheaper than Streetcar. Will take a look at the Guardian article...

I use City Car Club in Bristol, and it's great. Cars are clean and tidy and serviced, the system is really easy to use, and there's always one available. Only downsides:

• walking to your chosen car if you've got lots of stuff, i.e. child seat etc, can be a chore. Easiest way is to go pick up the car and bring it back to the house to load up which is fine for weekends away but not so good for taking the kids somewhere on your own
• the cars tend to be quite small hatchbacks, although there's a couple of larger ones you can book around the city, so for weekends away you need to book the larger ones or pack light.

The costs are definitely less than owning your own, and much less hassle!

I book them for an hour to do the Sainsbury's shop and it works out very cost effective. If you do the Pay As You Go then there's no monthly fees, so you could do it and see how you get on.

You can use them for business purposes as well.

HTH

That'll be me killing the thread again then.....