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.
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[@bemnacabine9354]

Same here, we had a recent issue with a renter and Fatllama never bothered responding. We won't be using again!

[@Big-GVideo]

Thanks for sharing this. The kit you rent out costs a lot to replace and Fat Llama just don't seem to care about that

[@SD-wu5od]

Thanks for sharing your experience

[@Big-GVideo]

No problem. Would you use them?

[@isabelleongjoco9646]

That's so scary that that had happened to you. How many times were you able to rent out your things, successfully though?

[@Big-GVideo]

I maybe did about 10 rentals and then stopped after the incident

[@user-pn7vg2fh3p]

an hour for a borrower to come is not long at all, what do you want the borrower to do.. teleport there within seconds...be realistic not everyone will live next to your house

[@Big-GVideo]

The borrower was an hour late for a time slot they picked. They didn’t come to my house I went out to meet them. I have every right to be unhappy in those circumstances. I don’t want them to teleport just to arrive close to the time they agreed. 5/10 minutes late isn’t a problem but an hour?

[@user-pn7vg2fh3p]

@@Big-GVideo this is the borrower's fault, so why blame fatllama? they don't control the user's behaviour. I just think you're too harsh for making this video. I had a great experience on the site.

[@Big-GVideo]

@@user-pn7vg2fh3p Sadly I found many of the renters were like this. I spent a lot of time sat in car parks waiting. Fat Llama also caused a few issues themselves and really didn't care about it. Fat Llama's customer service is also very poor. I'm glad you've had a good experience with them, but my experiences make me doubt what would happen if something went wrong. Would I get the cost of my kit back? I'm not prepared to find out

[@blakeronan]

AKWAYS BETTER To use the gut instinct @@Big-GVideo