Zipcar’s App Suffered a Black Friday Outage That Left Drivers Stranded

Zipcar, the app-based, low-cost car rental service, suffered a major technical fumble over the weekend that, by all accounts, was a total disaster for the customers impacted. 404 Media reports that the company’s app and website suffered outages on Friday that, in some cases, hugely inconvenienced users and, in the worst cases, reportedly left them stranded in cold, wintery weather, unable to unlock or drive their vehicles.

Zipcar, which was founded in 2000, technically considers itself a “car sharing” service and allows users to rent vehicles for low prices and with relatively little legwork. The company’s app is the key to much of its success. It allows users to make reservations as well as lock and unlock their vehicles and communicate with customer service representatives. It is the key to everything.

On Friday, the website and the app suffered outages that disrupted customers’ plans. 404’s report is largely based on user grievances aired on Zipcar’s social media pages, though Zipcar has also confirmed that it suffered technical difficulties on Friday. In many cases, it appears that the app would not let users lock the vehicle they had rented, which led customers to worry that the cars would be stolen if they left them. In other, more severe cases, customers reported app failures that left them stranded. One such report goes as follows:

“Rented a car and went to buy a quick drink to the store and all of the sudden the car is locked. I’ve been waiting over 4 hours in the cold. No help whatsoever, different answers and stuck waiting for an hour to speak with someone and no help. All my things inside, even my house keys and no way of getting them. This is so crazy and frustrating.”

Another similar report reads:

“I was stranded for 4 hours, tried [to] log into the account only to get locked out due to a ‘security measure,’” another says. “I called you guys and the people working hung up on me 3 times! Spend 2 hours waiting on the phone just for that to happen. The audacity!”

Zipcar has previously been criticized for having poor customer service, though the app’s meltdown adds considerable inconvenience. When reached for comment by Gizmodo, a Zipcar representative said: “During part of Friday afternoon, we experienced a rare outage related to increased site traffic and SMS requests to authenticate login. SMS requests were delayed due to cellular network congestion, which intensified as users repeatedly requested authentication. For a small percentage of our members who were not already logged into our mobile app, this resulted in login difficulties, impacting their reservations. While this issue is resolved, we’re also working to prevent it from reoccurring.”

I have used Zipcar before and would like to note that the experience is not great, even if you haven’t been locked out of your vehicle. This also isn’t the first controversy the company has suffered. Last year, the company was fined for letting users rent cars that had been recalled for safety reasons. It was also previously accused of charging New York customers illegal damage fees for returned vehicles.