Rentoid blog

I’ve been thinking recently about the concept of ‘Ownership’. What do we really own in life? What do we aspire to own? More importantly, how do these “assets” and desired accumulation of assets impact how we live? But before I answer these questions, I’d rather make a list of things we think we own, but actually don’t.

Our House: If it’s mortgaged, we clearly don’t own it. If it is unencumbered it is still owned by the government. Real Estate, is Spanish for Royal Estate. All land is ultimately owned by the crown or the government of the day. Stop paying your ‘rates’ and they will repossess your house. The rates we pay are a form of rent from the true owners. What we have is a lease without an expiration date.

Our Body: In actual fact it owns us. It demands what we feed it, how we treat it and how we exercise it. Disobey and it will cut our lives short.

Our Car: We can’t drive it without insurance and licenses, or the fuel which is taxed. Our car is a liability we hold for which fees must be paid to make it ‘usable’

Most things we think we own, we have greater access to. If we ‘own’ it in law, it just means we have permanent access, not true ownership. The only things we ever own are our thoughts, our memories and our hopes. Why most people spend their lives accumulating liabilities instead of experiences is beyond me. The real cost of perceived ownership is the pillaging of the planet, and locking ourselves into the industrial complex. All we really need is the right level of access to assets and we’ll be able to do and achieve more than people who go around buying stuff.

The cool thing about rentoid and the sharing culture that has emerged on the web recently is this:

We are all part of something much bigger than us.

Author and thinker Rachel Botsman has written a book ‘What’s mine is yours’, which features rentoid.com as one of the leaders of the movement. Which mean ‘you’ are a leader, because the site is what it is because of the people on it, not the people who built it. I’ll share more about Rachel and Collaborative Consumption in the coming weeks during the book launch, but here is a video of here speaking at TEDx in Sydney earlier this year to whet your appetite. It’s a very thought provoking talk about how cool the future can be. Enjoy.

We’ve recently discovered at our humble rentoid office about the uber intelligent Rachel Botsman. She’s co-author of new book “What’s mine is yours” - the rise of collaborative consumption. Which is well, really the movement we’ve been promoting since rentoid’s inception. We’ll talk more about it in the coming weeks. But here’s a great little video to whet the appetite.

Collaborative Consumption Groundswell Video from rachel botsman on Vimeo.

What we believe in at rentoid - we aim to update this as new ideas enter our head and we evolve. We’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

We’ve just updated our site on rentoid which is super awesome.

But there is only 1 new feature. Yep, just one. Which is a rating system. So after each rental you’ll be able to document your experience with your other rentoid member. Both the renter and the rentee get to rate each other and make some comments. It’s so simple to use I don’t need to explain it here.

There is nothing else which is new. Instead we’ve just made everything we already had easier to use.

Check it out and let us know your thoughts.

rentoid team.

Here’s a little email chain from a rentoid member / customer. We couldn’t help him this time. But we responded openly and honestly. This is what transpired:

Hi guys,

I called (rentoid member) several times and wrote him a mail. No reactions yet, and now it is too late.
I had to rent a flash for a three times higher price. (yes we are usually cheaper at rentoid)

Please refund my money.
Cheers Jörg

Hey Jorg,

Two things:
1. We have already refunded your rentoid fee into your paypal account.
2. We’ll check and ensure Sean is still out there and not on Holiday. If he doesn’t respond we’ll remove him from our database.

This type of thing happens rarely. Sorry you didn’t get what you need, this time. Though we’re sure all will be cool next time.
Steve.

Steve Sammartino - 0438779566
www.rentoid.com - the place to rent anything
skype:     steve.sammartino
twitter:    twitter.com/sammartino

Hi Steve,
thanks for the fast response.

According to our chat and the Idea standing behind rentoid for sure I will get back to you guys. The purpose of my mail was just to inform you about the situation and your next steps are exactly the steps I would do as well to ensure high quality.

Enjoy your weekend,
Jörg

This is how we roll at rentoid.com

You probably haven’t ever emailed the rentoid team because we actually have our personal phone numbers for people to call us when needed. But if you did, you’d get a pretty honest and friendly message. The YC Hacker News crew agree with our sentiments as can be seen below. Cheers, rentoid team.

Our good friend at rentoid.com Mr Ben Rowe, who runs the website I vote for art- has just done a terrific post on his blog which really define what we believe. So we’ve shamelessly copied and pasted right here so you can see into our soul.

Dear Old People Who Run the World,

My generation would like to break up with you.

Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences.

You wanted big, fat, lazy “business.” We want small, responsive, micro-scale commerce.

You turned politics into a dirty word. We want authentic, deep democracy — everywhere.

You wanted financial fundamentalism. We want an economics that makes sense for people — not just banks.

You wanted shareholder value — built by tough-guy CEOs. We want real value, built by people with character, dignity, and courage.

You wanted an invisible hand — it became a digital hand. Today’s markets are those where the majority of trades are done literally robotically. We want a visible handshake: to trust and to be trusted.

You wanted growth — faster. We want to slow down — so we can become better.

You didn’t care which communities were capsized, or which lives were sunk. We want a rising tide that lifts all boats.

You wanted to biggie size life: McMansions, Hummers, and McFood. We want to humanize life.

You wanted exurbs, sprawl, and gated anti-communities. We want a society built on authentic community.

You wanted more money, credit and leverage — to consume ravenously. We want to be great at doing stuff that matters.

You sacrificed the meaningful for the material: you sold out the very things that made us great for trivial gewgaws, trinkets, and gadgets. We’re not for sale: we’re learning to once again do what is meaningful.

In the top 20 search terms which leads people to our super terrific website is the following search tmer on Google:

Rent my stuff

And the answer is… Yes, Absolutely you can rent your stuff on rentoid.com. Not only can you, but you should for the following reasons:

1. You’ll make money out of idle assets you have.

2. You’ll save people money who rent your stuff and be a good ‘Netizen’

3. You don’t have to sell stuff you want for when you need it again.

4. You set the terms and prizes of your rentals.

5. Rentoid is not just making you money, but saving the world from over consumption.

Yep - these reasons and more are why you should “rent my stuff”.

Cheers, rentoid team.

Here’s a video explaining the new easier and quicker rental process on www.rentoid.com

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40WZGKwjARs]

Instead of having to wait for an approval process, all rental details of the owner of the item are now given immediately. Both on screen and via email. Payment of a 5% deposit (100% guaranteed) is made to confirm the rental and the owners details are given. So you can call them immediately and get renting. All payments are now made via PayPal which is very secure. Payments on PayPal can be made with credit card, PayPal account or via your even your bank account. All of which occur in a secure secure environment.

The bottom line is that we now get connected with renters straight away, with zero waiting on http://www.rentoid.com which makes the site more much easier to use and speeds up the service dramatically.