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Car2Go announced at the end of last week that they're adding a $1 fee to every rental of those blue and white gocarts they leave lying around town. They did it in a Terms of Service update that tried its hardest to make it seem like the company was doing us a favor. "Good news, guys! We're lowering the deductible on accidents!" It's not a good deal to drive a Car2Go, but wait until you see how cheap it is to crash one! You can't afford not to!

$1 may not seem like much but in two years I've been using the service my trips have averaged around $5, making this a 20% price increase. Coincidentally, 20 is also the percentage of my recent rentals which worked properly.

Everybody who's used the service in the last few months will tell you that rentals just don't want to end. No matter where in the city you are, the tiny cars will announce they're having trouble "connecting", leaving you to wait on hold with customer service until a sad representative can tell you they'll take care of it. If you're only using Car2Go to get places when you're in no particular hurry and desperately want to talk to a frustrated stranger on the phone, it's a great feature.

I've gotten different stories from different reps, but they're all unified that Car2Go is upgrading their systems to fix the problem. That's what they said when the problem started months ago, that's what they told me last week. So right in the middle of debilitating technical problems, the clown-car service decided it was a good time to add 20% to the cost of rides because that's what we were clamoring for. At least it's cheap to wreck them, though, and at least you'll know the rental is over.

On the other hand, I'd like to thank Car2Go for adding the bike racks. I really do like those.