Honk when you see a Flexicar

When I was a kid holidaying in France with my parents, we were using my grandfather car, a Citroen 2CV. 2CV might not be as common as a Commodore in Australia so I’ve added an image below.

When you would hit 40 k per hour the old piece of crap would shake like crazy, as if it would fall apart at anytime. Ah…But that’s another story and we don’t have time for it now. Maybe next time.

Anyhow, the cool thing with 2CV is that, to my delight as a kid, you’d honk when you see another 2CV, which is quite frequent in France, and the other driver would honk back.

Which bring us back to our beloved Flexicars. Honking when you are driving a Flexicar and see another one has been tacitly developed among members, and I think it’s awesome and should become a convention.

Not to mention that this allows me to reminisce these fun memories of my childhood, and reiterate the whole honking thing with Flexicars.

Okay, Brunswick members will probably have to drive with the hand on the horn, now that we have seven Flexicars there…

SO, please don’t call the police if you see me zipping around in a Flexicar and honking like a mad man, and let me be happy, I’m just having some childhood flashback!

And don’t forget to honk next time you see a Flexicar.

Citroen 2CV. The French car par excellence!

Greg, honking blogger

Flexi-Photo Competition

A big thanks to all the members who participated in our December’s photo competition.

Recall that you simply had to send us a photo of yourself with your favourite Flexicar to enter the draw and win some driving credits.

We had photos of members munching on Flying cars, going nuts in Sunshine on some trashy 90s hits, biking crazy in Mount Hotham or Oscar in some exotic places just to name a few.

Here are some of the pictures that we loved.

Toto doing some Xmas shopping

Starving Flexicar member

Sunshine Dance Party - Wagga Wagga -

Flexicar Bikies

Congratulations to our lucky winners Shingo, Ryan and Sarah who shared $500 in driving credits.

What’s more enjoyable than this exquisite taste of free driving?

Greg, Saturday Blogger

Man joins Flexicar for Wife’s 40th!

I heard the most gorgeous story the other day about the most romantic Flexicar member in existence.

The man in question was planning something ultra-special for his wife’s 40th birthday present. He had purchased for her (at great expense) front row tickets to Elton John’s concert at the Werribee Mansion last January. And he planned to personally chauffeur her to the event aswell.

So, he signed up to Flexicar and booked a vehicle so that he could deliver his wife in style and comfort to the Elton John concert. He dropped her off right at the front door then cruised back to the car park to wait for his wife.

During the concert while the lucky wife rocked out with her friends to the tunes of Elton John, the romantic husband waited in the carpark with his Flexicar. At the end of the concert he whizzed right up to the front door before the post-concert rush, picked up his fabulous wife and then they whizzed straight back to the city in record time.

The whole story must be true because I heard it from his Wife!

-posted by Ruth

p.s. If you have a more romantic story involving a Flexicar then I challenge you to send it in to us.

Waterless car washing at Flexicar

While Flexicar offers you a great way to reduce your environmental footrpint, as a business we are also always looking at ways to minimise and reduce our own environmental impact of doing business.

As the long hot days of summer are rolling in, it is concerning how little water we have in Melbourne at present.  Melbourne’s water storages are currently at only 33.4%.  So we all need to do our bit to conserve water!

We have always had a water wise policy with regards to cleaning our Flexicars; only taking them to a car wash when they really needed it, and going to car washes that used recylced water.  But we have now teamed up with another great small business to reduce our water use even further.

Jonno’s Car Wash uses Style Magic – a waterless spray & wipe that is 100% natural and organic, Australian made & owned.  He uses NO WATER to clean our Flexicars, and his cleaning process also removes 98% of bacteria, with no chemicals and only micro-fibre cleaning cloths.  Jonno was a Finalists for the savewater! awards 2008.

So next time you see a sparkling clean Flexicar, you can be assured that not one drop of precious water was used to get it that way.  Thanks Jonno!

We might get there earlier than what you expect

I get a lot of enquiries about Flexicar’s expansion.

Ideally, everyone would like to have a Flexicar right in front of their door…But it wouldn’t be such a good thing as the idea of car sharing is also to reduce the amount of cars.

At the moment our service is concentrated in the inner city area, but following our growth plan, we are expanding from the city outwards. We are currently working at filling gaps between our existing locations – and we’ll have new locations soon in Port Melbourne, Brunswick, Kensington and South Yarra.

In regards to adding cars to our network, this is how it works at our end: we add cars in response to local demand – and this is where you could help us!

If you know of friends, family and local businesses in some areas where Flexicar is not present and who are interested in using Flexicar, get them to register their interest on our website at www.flexicar.com.au.

The more registrations we have from these areas the sooner it will be that we add cars there. You can tell friends, family and local businesses about Flexicar HERE.

Speak to you soon

Greg, Flexiblogger

Where are my Wagons??

Hi there

Have you ever heard of Zorro, Zeus, Casper or Hercules? Have you ever needed to transport your 20 feet long harpsichord out and about in Melbourne?

Or maybe you simply wanted to show off your Malibu Surfboard pretending there is an incredible swell in St Kilda?

Well some of our members did have the need for such things but they sometimes encountered a massive problem: the only Flexicar available for booking was our cheeky SmartForTwo Fruity – which is about as long as a half motorbike – and I let you imagine the scene to fit anything in there.

That’s usually at this precise moment that I get a desperate call or email from a Flexicar member, begging me to provide him with the locations of our sumptuous and spacious Corolla Wagons or Subaru Forester.

So I decided it was about time to fix that issue once for all!

I am now going to disclose to you Flexicar beloved member the high demanded list of our wagons/Forester locations:

Foresters (compact SUV)

Hercules lives on Blyth Street in Brunswick

The Mighty Thor lives on Carlton Street, Carlton

The handsome Samson lives in the City Square Carpark, now near the lifts

Corolla Station wagons:

Casper is on Rathdowne Street in Carlton North

Zeus in on Newry Street in Fitzroy North

Gomez the Spaniard lives on Muir street in Richmond, right in front of the West Richmond train station

Last but not least Zorro is in St Kilda, on Carlisle Street

That’s it! I better not receive a query about this ever again!

If you would like to see the exact locations of these Flexicars, please check our MAP on Flexicar.com.au

We always try to stay consistent with keeping the same Flexicar at the same parking spot, but it is nevertheless likely that we need to swap our cars between locations for maintenance purposes.

If you would like to talk to me, please email greg@flexicar.com.au, or give us a call on 1300 36 37 80.

I’ll talk to you soon

Greg

Flexicar Service Outage: Friday 1-Aug-08

Poor Flexicar! On Friday afternoon, 1st August, we had a service outage.

On Friday afternoon in Melbourne, there was an outage with the Optus mobile phone network. You may have noticed that your friends with Optus mobiles were uncontactable on Friday arvo. So were most of our cars.

The mobile phone network is how the cars communicate with the Flexicar server. So if the mobile network goes down then the Flexicars and the server don’t talk to eachother.

We do our best to maintain the Flexicar service at all times for our members. But what can we do when our service providers let us down?

What we did was notify all members who had upcoming bookings. Then we posted a big message on our homepage and on our phone system.
Luckily the mobile phone network was restored around 7.30pm, which meant that only a few people were inconvenienced and we could relax and start our weekend.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused to any of our valuable Flexers!
We hope that you had a great weekend.

I Love Dogs

I have the most gorgeous Border Collie named Harry.  I just adore him, and I know the feeling is mutual!  One of the things he enjoys the most is going to the river for a run and a swim.  Nothing excites him more than when we’re heading there.  How does he know?  Well I walk to the car, put a towel over the back seat and put the rear windows down…game on!

BUT…this isn’t in a Flexicar!  See Harry lives up home in the country with my Mum, so that when he gets into a car, it’s mum’s who tries to stop me, but of course she can’t, as I know how much he loves the special treat when I am home.

It is from this perspective that I can understand a lot of our members being pet lovers and really wanting to be able to take their loved furry friends with them wherever they go.  It is hard to leave them behind, especially if it’s a lovely day outside.

However, we’re sharing these cars, and unfortunately, a number of our members are allergic to pet hair.  Therefore it is imperative to make it a fair and equitable service for all of the great people who are part of the Flexicar family.  My Operational staff are reporting seeing pet hair on seats and in boots of Flexicars when they go to service and clean the vehicles.

So, next time you are using a Flexicar, and you think it will be okay to take your pet, it isn’t!  Not only is it inconsiderate, but it leaves you liable to the fines and charges as stated in our Terms & Conditions.  Please make sure you consider your fellow members at all times and leave your lovely pets at home.

Brendan the Operations Guy

Sydney Locations, Free Memberships and Driving Hours

You’ll be pleased to know that we’ve launched TWO new locations in Sydney.

Priscilla has found a new home in Kings Cross, just around the corner from the station. And Tweety has flown the coup and is now living on Crown Street Surry Hills right outside the Clock Hotel.

What’s in if for you? Well other than being able to give you access to these 2 cars in Sydney, you get FIVE hours of FREE Driving for telling FIVE friends about Flexicar.

All you need to do is CC us on info@flexicar.com.au when you write an email to 5 friends telling them about our launch into Sydney.

We respect your friends’ privacy as much as you do, so we will never use their email addresses. We just need you to CC us so that we know you’ve sent the email on and we can make sure you get your free hours.

If you’re stuck for something to say- just copy and paste something we’ve already put together.

“Hi. I thought you’d want to know that Flexicar is adding new Flexicars to Surrey Hills and Kings Cross – and membership is totally free until April 25th. I’m a member and it’s a great service. So if you want a cheap, green and easy alternative to car ownership, join or check it out at www.flexicar.com.au.”

Want another THREE hours?
The above offer is limited to five hours. You want an unlimited opportunity to earn free hours?

Oh alright then.

You get three free hours of driving for every person you refer to Flexicar who becomes a member – and why wouldn’t they since membership is free for New Sydney Members till April 25th?! Just remind them to put your name in the “Additional Information” field of the new member application.

Happy emailing!

Debbie from Sales and Marketing

Cleanliness is next to….

As Operations Manager of Flexicar, I have found myself becoming a bit of a neat freak. My mother would be shocked after I spent my adolescent years with a bedroom full of clothes in piles that failed to discriminate clean from dirty, and dishes under the bed that could possibly have been there since the last time my friends were over for a Super Nintendo party!

How times have changed. Overseeing each vehicle in our Flexicar family, and getting feedback from our members, I have come to see that the cleanliness of the cars is a high priority, not only for my team, but for all of our members. There’s nothing worse than finding sand, food scraps, dog hair etc. The interiors of the cars are cleaned on a regular basis. Due to the drought however, the exteriors get a little less love unfortunately…but we are environmentally conscious here at Flexicar – better a dirty car than no water to drink!

So, as a member and a car sharer, please make sure our Ops Team’s terrific work isn’t in vain (and that my new found fastidiousness isn’t futile!). You can do this by ensuring you don’t smoke or have pets in the cars, leave each car neat and tidy, all seats up, just the way you found it, and ready for the next member to enjoy….feel free to have a bedroom like mine at home all you like!

Brendan from Flexicar Operations