Level of satisfaction with car sharing service is high in ‘ease of use and responsiveness to customers,’ but low in ‘price and compensation procedure’

- Green Car has the highest rate of redress agreement -

    As the sharing economy has attracted much social interest recently, car sharing, which is a model of car rental where people rent cars at pickup locations close to them for short periods of time, often by the hour or the minute, and return them to the initial pickup locations, is rapidly growing. However, there isn’t sufficient information that consumers can objectively refer to when comparing services offered by car-sharing service providers.

    In this regard, the Korea Consumer Agency (President Hee-sook Lee) analysed the service satisfaction and applications for damage redress associated with three (3) popular car-sharing service providers in order to provide comparative information for consumers to refer to when making choices.

    The analysis found that the consumer satisfaction level regarding the car-sharing service providers was 3.53 points on average (out of a possible 5 points), and CARSSUM gained the highest satisfaction point, followed by Green Car and SOCAR. As for the rate of agreement on redress for damage, Green Car had a relatively higher rate of agreement than SOCAR.

□  While the level of user satisfaction with ‘ease of use and responsiveness to customers’ is high, the satisfaction level of users regarding ‘price and compensation procedure’ is low. 

    With regard to car-sharing services, 725 service users were surveyed, and the results revealed that the level of user satisfaction with ‘ease of use and responsiveness to customers (3.67 points)’and ‘service favorability (3.54 points)’was high, but in the case of ‘price and compensation procedure (3.40 points)’ and ‘variety of offered cars (3.42 points),’users showed relatively low levels of satisfaction.

□  Green Car earns a relatively high level of user satisfaction with environmentally-friendly car sharing.

    And 41.4% (300 persons) of respondents said that they had used electric cars or hybrid cars (hereinafter referred to as “environmentally-friendly cars”) as their shared cars.

    The level of user satisfaction with the environmentally-friendly cars was 3.78 points on average, and more specifically, Green Car earned 3.87 points, the highest point, followed by CARSSUM (3.74 points) and SOCAR (3.70 points).

□ Green Car has the highest rate of redress agreement.

    For the past three (3) years (2015~2017), the KCA received a total of 139 applications for damage redress associated with the above three (3) car-sharing service providers. By service provider, SOCAR accounted for 69.8% (97 cases), the largest share, and Green Car recorded 30.2% (42 cases). And as for the rate of agreement on redress for damage*, Green Car (54.8%) showed a higher rate compared with SOCAR (34.0%).

* Rate of cases where consumers were awarded compensation such as refunds, recompense for damage, contract cancellation, etc.

    The KCA shared the survey results with the service providers in question and requested them to actively improve issues involving consumer complaints. In addition, in order to help consumers make better and more reasonable choices and encourage corporations to improve the quality of their products and/or services, it will continue to provide comparative information on products and services to consumers.