Fat Llama: I urge you to watch before you try Fat Llama out
The concept of Fat Llama is great. Rent an item locally and don’t pay the delivery charges (these can often be as much or more than the cost of the rental). You can save money on rentals and it’s better for the environment. You can also rent your gear out and earn some money. I’ve rented 20 items out to people and rented a few items to try out myself. Initially I loved Fat Llama, but then something happened to make me change my mind. I’ve come across reports of people having their equipment stolen or damaged. Fat Llama say they’ll cover these via their insurance. Just before I was due to rent an item to someone I received a message from Fat Llama saying my rental wouldn’t be insured unless I took an action. The action was trivial but could only be done by Fat Llama. I tried to contact them by email, chat and phone. But they never answered or replied. This made me stop and think, if I’m giving my expensive equipment out to stranger, based on my experience can I rely on Fat Llama to sort out a serious issue. As they couldn’t even respond to me after numerous contacts, I felt they wouldn’t be able to help me in the event of a serious issue. So I stopped using them. I really like the concept, but stopped using it as I felt it was poorly executed and I didn’t want to risk my gear. Is there an alternative I could try??
Other negatives are you also spend a long time waiting for people to turn up to hire equipment from you. This happens on pick up and return. One time I waited for an hour. I also found the app and website buggy. I pointed this out to Fat Llama but guess what, it went unanswered. I’ve had people contacting me at 3am asking if they can hire my equipment. Luckily my phone was turned off. As a borrower you make requests of people and often you don’t get a response. This was my experience.