Turo Hosts Watch, Critique Renter Driving Habits on TikTok

If information about Hertz wrongly having clients arrested has put you off renting a automotive from the standard sources, you may need thought-about Turo as a back-up possibility. The issue is, your Turo host may be monitoring you — and so they may even be bitching about your driving on social media.

Turo is a peer-to-peer car-sharing service that goals to do what Airbnb has carried out for residence leases; customers reserve a automotive from an Common Joe, with all interactions carried out by way of Turo’s interface. And identical to Airbnb, Turo hosts can get a little bit anal about the way in which you deal with their autos.

Take Kyle and John, Turo hosts who run @drivetheemeraldcoast on TikTok, for instance. These hosts not solely use a monitoring gadget known as Bouncie to maintain tabs on their autos, however in addition they then take to TikTok to critique the driving expertise of their renters.

See, Kyle and John have a Porsche Boxster that they hire out on Turo — however they spend numerous time watching the way in which renters use their automobile, critiquing them for speedy acceleration and arduous braking. Whereas the 2 often notice that they “anticipated” this to occur, they nonetheless categorical shock as individuals driving a sports activities automotive with a heavy foot.

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That’s as a result of Bouncie, which may be plugged into your automobile’s OBDII port, tracks your location, pace, acceleration, and braking, sending all of it to an app on the host’s cellphone.

It does make sense why hosts are inclined to trace these items. As The Drive studies, one Turo host was capable of get better a Tesla Mannequin 3 {that a} renter had disassembled to check match aftermarket components by monitoring the automotive’s actions.

Turo explicitly allows for tracking devices in its vehicles, and typically, hosts don’t must disclose that the automobile you’re renting is provided with these gadgets. Hosts who take to social media often inform different hosts not to disclose the presence of those gadgets.

On one hand, I completely perceive the impetus to need to monitor your property to ensure your automotive’s security by the hands of a stranger. On the opposite, there’s one thing extremely creepy about somebody realizing your precise location always. I as soon as stayed in a rental property and forgot to lock the door, and the host texted me to remind me to take action… as a result of he had a digital camera in the home. I received the hell out of Dodge, and I do know I’d need to do the identical factor if a complete stranger began to textual content me about my driving habits as a result of they knew precisely the place I used to be. I’d even be extraordinarily weirded out to later uncover that these strangers had been making movies about me afterward.