One speculation on the parts issue... Most rental companies only rent cars which have been produced in the past couple of years. Because those vehicles are almost always under warranty, I wonder if the black market for used parts for them is small and therefore doesn't provide much of an incentive for such theft? Almost all repairs involving mechanical failure (as opposed to an accident) on newer cars are handled by dealers because of warranties.
Let's consider slightly older vehicles. Or, for that matter, even newer ones. How many parts on a car could be profitably swapped out with low value replacements while allowing the vehicle to remain operable? One could certainly replace a water pump with an older one, but it couldn't be so badly damaged that the vehicle could not be driven a few miles. What's the marginal difference in the value of the stolen part vs. the semi-operable one? Is the sum total of these marginal differences minus the cost of renting the vehicle sufficient to make this crime worthwhile? For non-commodity vehicles (a Honda Civic w/ many aftermarket parts, etc.), I can see positive ROI for the thief, but owners of such vehicles would no sooner rent them out than they would offer up their pets or girlfriends by the hour.
You're right. The "marginal difference", as you say, is key. So let's assume theft of parts happens rarely. Don't we still need a process in place to adjudicate when it does happen? Let's say the theft is not of a water pump but a car radio or, let's say, the owner left his radar detector or his daughter's ipod in the car and the renter walked off with it. What's the process for adjudicating that claim? Does getaround need to get involved? What if it's a false claim and the renter is unfairly charged for it? The same applies to scrathes and damages. If the owner claims the car was scratched during the rental, does he need to back up that claim with photographic evidence - before and after pictures? And what's the process for authenticating those pictures as valid? All I'm saying is there's a minefield of potential disputes here, especially because there is not necessarily a hand-off between the owner and the renter when the car is returned.
The same issues are faced with rental of any high-value item, whether it be a house, boat or car. The answer is both scale (many items) and in-built pricing that expects, say, 1 in 100 people to steal/break something. You've got to price in the expectation of replacing certain items.
For the individual owner without fleet economics to back them up, however, one individual event (ie, theft, major damage) can be enough to put them out of the pool.
Just like an insurance company -- by maintaining a car fleet across which relatively few instances of damage/theft/etc will occur. They can afford to take a significant hit on a few cars, and they can afford to hire people to maintain/verify/qualify the cars at scale.
Normal rental car companies have employees whose job it is to maintain the car, fix any cosmetic damages and notify the administrative unit if they believe a significant damage or theft has taken place. However, this is a different situation. The owner of the car seems to be the one who is repsonsible here for carrying out any checks and my question is, what is the process for negotiating any claims of theft or damage in this case? In the case of a normal car company, they simply make an outright decision as to whether the driver has damaged or stolen and then they put a charge on the person's credit card. In this case there are three parties - the renter, the owner and the middleman (getaround). So, if a claim of damage is made by the owner, in order to bill the renter, there needs to be a process on getaround's part to verify that claim. Similarly, if the renter claims that a false damage/theft claim has been made by the owner, there needs to be a way for the renter to be able to support that claim. My question is, what is that process? Does it require both the owner and renter to document all aspects of the car before an after each trip? Because to me that seems like the only way to ensure that fraud does not occur at some point in this process.
