On Thursday, car-sharing company Getaround announced a new partnership with Bay Area car-sharing nonprofit City CarShare and its owner-operator, Carma. As the Chronicle reports, City CarShare will remain in business as an independent nonprofit, but it will lease its fleet of approximately 200 vehicles (and associated parking spaces) to Getaround, which will take a commission.

Representatives for both companies said the arrangement would benefit City CarShare's 20,000 active users, allowing them to take advantage of Getaround's superior technology (which allows locking and unlocking of cars with a smartphone) and lower, monthly-fee-free prices.

But many consumers we spoke to aren't happy about the way the company handled the changeover—which happened almost overnight, and has particularly impacted disabled members who rely on CityCarShare's wheelchair-accessible vans to get around town. 

Tipster Mark W. was the first to alert us to the change, telling us that City CarShare reservations from November 9th onward were no longer available. As of yesterday, the City CarShare platform is no longer online, and users who try to log in are forwarded to Getaround.

“To prepare for the fleet consolidation announcement with Getaround, the online reservation system underwent some changes, most likely causing glitches with bookings,” City CarShare spokesperson Stephanie Yang told us yesterday, adding that members should be able to reserve cars once they join Getaround. 

But many users are still struggling to make bookings in the new system, and have expressed their displeasure on Twitter:

@Getaround are the CityCarShare cars actually live on the getaround site yet? I don't see any familiar cars/locations when I search.

— Jake Rodkin (@ja2ke) November 11, 2016

Hey @Getaround long time CityCarshare member here. WTF taking over the cars and then not being ready to let us book?

— Madge Miller (@madge707) November 11, 2016

@Getaround You are going to loose most of your CCS membership for this fiasco. #citycarsharefail #switchtoMAVEN

— Kevin (@KEVINSFCA) November 11, 2016

Tipster Kevin K. told us he's displeased with many aspects of the changeover, especially that all of his credit card information was sent to Getaround without prior notice or permission. He and other users also expressed irritation that Getaround requires a Facebook account to use, and won't allow users to create an account without receiving their personal information from Facebook. 

Perlita P., a tipster and City CarShare member, is even more upset by the transition, as she's no longer able to book City CarShare's wheelchair-accessible AccessMobile vans—which she was planning to do this week.  

“We specifically have a City CarShare membership to be able to use the wheelchair vans," she said, noting that Getaround's website makes no reference as to when they will return. "This is a vital service for people with disabilities, and we found out that the vans were being discontinued when we were going to alter a reservation that we had had for many months now."

When CityCarShare launched them in 2008, the AccessMobile vans were the nation's first wheelchair-accessible car share vans. In 2014, City CarShare received a nearly $1 million grant from the state-funded Metropolitan Transportation Commission to expand its fleet, including AccessMobile, to underserved East Bay communities.

Yang explained that the AccessMobile vans are still being integrated with Getaround's technology, and will be added to Getaround next week. However, she declined to comment on whether they would continue to be available in the long term. 

In the meantime, disabled users say, they've been left high and dry. 

“Wheelchair-accessible cabs are very few and hard to get," says tipster Dominika B., who is a wheelchair user. "This is really devastating."

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Update, 4:20pm: A press representative for Getaround says that the City CarShare users we spoke to misunderstood many elements of the transition, most notably the alleged transfer of credit card data without permission.

"No City CarShare users had their information or credit card details migrated to the Getaround platform without their knowledge ... [Using Getaround] was an opt-in process only," she said.

She also defended the company's requirement for renters to have Facebook accounts as "an important part of Getaround’s trust and safety algorithm," and noted that based on customer feedback, the company would "consider adding other social channels for verification going forward."

As for the wheelchair-accessible vehicles, it appears they will not be making the transition between the two companies at all. "These vehicles were not included in the partnership arrangement between CityCarShare and Getaround," she said, adding that Getaround does not currently have any wheelchair-accessible vehicles in its peer-to-peer renting system.

City CarShare previously declined to comment on the fate of the AccessMobile vans; we'll follow up to see if we can get more information on their future. 

Update, 11/16: Since the announcement of the acquisition, Getaround logos have been added to a number of City CarShare vehicles, and many have wondered how the two companies will share their parking spaces in the city, some of which are on public property and city streets.

"Whether on private property or in an SFMTA garage, there's no cross-car-share use of these pods (car share stations)," said SFMTA senior project analyst Andy Thornley. The car share organizations pay the rent or fee for their spaces as part of their system, as an exclusive arrangement—which means a Getaround pod, for example, can only be used by a Getaround vehicle.

"The recent Getaround acquisition of City CarShare means there's going to be some overlap of the two systems as they consolidate," Thornley said. Getaround is gradually re-branding City CarShare vehicles and pods with Getaround signage, but there will be dual-branded City CarShare/Getaround vehicles at some pods for at least a little while, Thornley explains.

In addition to car share pods in private and public garages and parking lots all over the city, there are around 140 on-street car share pods divided between City CarShare, Getaround, and Zipcar as part of an SFMTA pilot project that's testing the notion of using curb parking for car-share pods.

SFMTA is currently completing an evaluation of the on-street pilot, and the findings will be presented to its board of directors in the next few months.

"We've asked Getaround to continue operating City CarShare's on-street pods unchanged, until we deliver our pilot evaluation and recommendations to the SFMTA board," Thornley said.