RELEASE: 'Lock-ins' the latest tactic in customer retention?

A man, who earlier in the week criticised a popular car club on social media site Twitter, has today hit out at new customer retention policies after being held in an underground car lot for almost half an hour.

"Not being able to book a car at short notice is one thing but trapping your customers in with the cars doesn't seem like the solution - I've heard of loyalty cards, no claim bonuses, 24 month contracts, exclusivity deals but this is the first time I've heard of 'lock-ins' being used outside of the hospitality industry!"

Whilst Jerry recognises the incident was a rather unfortunate mistake caused by a faulty locking mechanism he says it hasn't done a huge amount to improve his brand perception. "The difficult thing is that a year ago I was a real positive brand ambassador, telling everyone I knew how wonderful the service was. In fairness their customer support team were very supportive when I finally managed to get out and get mobile phone signal but it is however getting harder and harder to sing the service's praises the more it traps me places against my will!"

Jerry sold his car after moving to East London because he couldn't justify the high insurance premiums for how little he used it. "In many ways the service is an absolute godsend, giving me access to cars, or even vans, whenever I need them and letting me use them for the occasional short bursts I want, though in recent months I've started having to plan further and further ahead to guarantee getting one."

"I use the cars both for pleasure and for work, but when you're hiring by the hour timing is everything so it hasn't helped that in 2 out of 3 recent personal hires the previous user returned the car late - just not cricket! It's a lot harder to make customers than keep them so I'm hoping they're working to make real improvements, they do seem to offer decent user credits when the service lets you down."

Asked earlier in the week about the difficulty of finding cars in the Shadwell region of East London @streetcarhq replied, "Where abouts are you based? We watch that ratio very closely, but there can be some regional and seasonal variations."