Photo by Brandon Nedwek.

Photo by Brandon Nedwek.

Buried six paragraphs into an email sent Friday evening with the gripping subject line “Updates to Member Agreements” is the news that Car2Go members are about to start paying $1 more per ride.

In this classic Friday news dump, readers must first wade through some nice sounding rhetoric about lowering your deductible should you damage one of the blue-and-white contraptions.

“We want you to know that car2go has your back by putting your financial interests first, allowing you to use car2go with the peace of mind that if you are involved in an accident, your financial exposure will be limited….

Beginning June 1, 2015, each member’s deductible will be lowered from the current rate of $1,000 to $250. And starting June 1, 2015, if you take 91 or more trips by the end of 2015, your deductible will be $0 – yes, $0. At the beginning of 2016, the trip count will reset to 0.”

That’s so nice of you Car2Go, thanks! Can you tell me more about this “putting your financial interests first” business?

And here, in one of the last paragraphs of an email that this reporter received at 7:16 p.m. on a Friday night, is the news: Starting on June 1, the first 90 trips you take in a year will include a $1 surcharge (in their parlance, Driver Protection Fee), ostensibly to pay for that lowered deductible.

After users pay the extra dollar for 90 trips—which amounts to more than 15 trips a month for the remainder of 2015, and in future years, about 7.5 trips each month—they will no longer be charged the fee.

In other words, drivers will be paying up to $90 a year to have their deductibles reduced from $1,000 to $250 (or $0 if you take 91 trips or more).

When one disgruntled user wondered if those fees would actually entirely go to reducing deductibles, Car2Go admitted as much that there are other factors at play.

And no, you can’t opt out of it.

Filed Under: car-sharing, car2go, fees,