Collaborative sharing startups have been making waves in the
business world and one of these innovative new companies to make its name known
in this corner of the industry is RelayRides.
RelayRides is a company that
allows car owners to rent their idle vehicles out to people who contact them
directly through the website. Being the first business to offer peer-to-peer
car sharing, the concept for RelayRides came about when founder Shelby Clark
found the need to rent a car during a terrible blizzard and ended up biking
through the storm just to get to the rental company’s garage. The company was
founded in June 2010 and six months later, RelayRides’ headquarters transferred
to sunny San Francisco and since then continued to grow into a successful
peer-to-peer car rental marketplace.
Membership to the site is free and anyone can sign up browse through
the listings. Offering your car up for rent is free, too; however RelayRides
collects a 40% commission on the price the owner and renter agree on. Car
owners need not worry about handing their keys off to strangers as there are
strict requirements that need to be met before a renter even becomes eligible
to request to rent a car. Extensive background checks are done and those with
serious offenses such as DUIs, reckless driving, vehicular manslaughter
charges, stoplight violations, speeding violations over 25mph or having two or
more speeding tickets on their driving record become ineligible to rent from
RelayRides members. The commission the company collects also pays for insurance
for both the car owners and the renters.
In October 2011, RelayRides entered into a strategic partnership
agreement with General Motors wherein GM car owners with a subscription to
OnStar can link their car’s subscription to their RelayRides account making
face-to-face contact with renters unnecessary because renters can use their
mobile phones to access the vehicles by themselves.
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