Bilkollektivet i Oslo. Reviews 45

Great app and cars. Top staff and service.

Very good service

Easy to book a car. Great cars.

I was stupid enough to pay Bilkollektivet 6 750 NOK to become a member to be able to rent the cars (it was some years ago in 2012), under the condition that the shares would be paid back upon leaving. And of course, when I left, they “changed the rules”, and now “member share can only be paid if the yearly report is approved by the accountant, and if Bilkollektivets equity capital has increased with more than 4%”. That was more than a year ago, never got paid back.

I have been a member for many years but downgraded to non-membership because membership benefits do not amount to much for moderate to low-frequency users (all benefits are moved to the most expensive tier membership). While the idea of Bilkollektivet is good, my experience is that Bilkollektivet is far from a no-brainer alternative to owning a car. As a city dweller, I mostly need a vehicle for long drives out of the city (mountains, Sweden, Denmark, visiting friends and family) and this is where the case for Bilkollektivet as a vehicle provider starts falling apart. It becomes expensive if you want to cover some ground. In fairness this problem is not exclusive to Bilkollektivet, all the car-sharing services seem to have built the business case around high-frequency local short-time rentals. It is a way to maximize vehicle use and revenues, but it is not a way to offer a five-start use-case for the users. It is not all negative though. One good thing is that they have pure transport vehicles, capable of moving big items, and that km fees are somewhat differentiated between different types of vehicles. The extremely slow adaptation of EV’s by Bilkollektivet has been a big frustration for many years, but the EV situation is slowly improving. User experience became better after they started copying Hyre. Overall, for me being a member for many years has been bearable, but certainly not an obvious recommendation for everyone. A weekend rental from a normal rental service can come out much cheaper than Bilkollektivet, so unfortunately Bilkollektivet is not a one-stop solution for all your ground transportation needs. I would give 2,5 stars if that was possible.

Beware, this company has a terrible customer service. I'd recommend using competitors over them. Hyre is available with much better customer service. Unfortunately in multiple encounteres I have seen their lack of consideration and care for their customers and users. Firstly, they never answered their customer telephone number during hours that I called. I had been on the line waiting for two and a half hours once, an hour another time and 45minutes three other times, without anyone picking up. Clearly this is not a 1-time line-is-busy situation. They systematically ignore customer calls.

Secondly, on their forum I added to voices of others who had an issue with registration, as once they added digital verification with Statens Vegvesen's forerkortsystem, they effectively excluded non-Norwegian EU/EEA driving license holders from being able to sign up for their service. They never published my respectful comment on their forum. They also wrote back in my follow-up email to them, that essentially they don't care that their service discriminates and excludes other EU/EEA citizens, and that it is Vegvesen's fault. Meanwhile competitors like Hyre manually verify non-Norwegian driver's licenses. I called Vegvesen who told me it would be possible to technically accomodate a check of other EEA drivers licenses against an EEA database they have, but that no one, incl. Bilkollektivet has requested this. They could have, but they haven't. They could do what Hyre does with manual checks of EEA drivers, but they don't care enough to.

Thirdly, their app is not at all intuitive on how to extend bookings, and in fact does not offer you a way to do so when your ride is nearing its end, and you haven't gotten to your destination. When I have written emails to their customer service, they were very condescending, without any empathy and completely unhelpful. It's as if they've been given a script by someone to charge as many extra fees, and not budge even a little. Someone wrote below they have the worst customer service in Norway. Unfortunately, I have to say that is true!

Fourth, the cars are in a very bad condition. Scratches everywhere and it takes you 20 minutes after rental to document all of the scratches, otherwise you could get charged for having caused it. That eats into rental time. I don't understand why the documentation process can't start before the booking? They purposefully want it to count as your rental time.

Fifth, the electric charger didn't five times recognize that I've plugged it in, so I had to do plug and unplug it 6-7 times.

I would avoid this company as much as possible. Unfortunately, my fear is that there isn't as much competition in Norway or Oslo, so they know many wouldn't have a choice but to keep to their service. But the bad competition market here, hurts Norwegians and drives people to want to own their own car. It's a real pity that a service meant for carsharing, lacks the spirit of sharing, inclusiveness and customer care.

Good idea but poor management from the company. The car are often very dirty (snus or food in the cup holder, dog hair, feet marks on the seats). It seems that a lot of their members do not give a s**t to the cars. When you claim with pictures to the client service, they are non responsive and when they finally reach out they are not fixing the issue and become agressive when you ask for improvment. I've been a client for 7 years and I am now leaving this company.

I wanted to rent a car, but I could not take it for more than 30 minutes, I decided to take another one, I did not use the car, I only unlocked it and blocked it after 3 minutes, they charged me like for a whole hour, is it outrageous if I would have taken the car for 30 minutes? how much would i pay? how about an hour too? be careful when you take the car