Methamphetamines in the car” and “Chu-hi while driving”… The reality of the abusive users behind “private car sharing”, which is no longer in operation.

Service Ends after Less Than 10 Years

Anyca, a car sharing service between individuals, was completely terminated at the end of last year. The service attracted a lot of attention as a service that allowed anyone to rent a car from a wide variety of options at low prices, and the number of members reached 910,000, but the service was terminated after less than 10 years. Automotive journalist Kumiko Kato takes a closer look at the malicious users behind the scenes.

Anyca,” which launched in September 2003 as a pioneering car sharing service between individuals, completely terminated its service on December 31, 2012.

Car sharing, which has been spreading rapidly in recent years, can be divided into two types: rental cars (with a “wa” license plate number), such as Times CarShare, and person-to-person car sharing, in which a vehicle owned by an individual is rented out. Anyca” was a matching service for inter-personal car sharing. Unlike car rental-type car sharing, which is a paid-for rental service, car sharing between individuals does not involve the use of “Wa” license plates. The reason for the service’s popularity was the variety of car models available, such as old cars and sports cars, which were not available in the rental car market.

In this article, I will look back on the actual cases of malicious users of “Anyca” from among those I have interviewed.

White powder” found inside a car

Satoshi Kobayashi (pseudonym), who lives in the Kansai region, has been using “Anyca” since around ’20 to conduct inter-personal car sharing. At the end of 2011, when he was cleaning out his car, he noticed a small transparent bag stuck between the dashboard and the windshield. I pulled it out and found a white powdery substance inside the bag.

I thought, “No way.　I thought. I had seen pictures and dramas of methamphetamine, but of course, I had never seen the actual drug. I was worried about what I should do with the bag of methamphetamine, even though it looked like it, and I asked a fellow “Anyca” owner what I should do about it. I was shocked again when the results of the evaluation showed that it was definitely methamphetamine.

At the police station, I was made to do various things, such as holding a sachet of methamphetamine and pointing at it, and having my picture taken. They also took my fingerprints and several full-body photos of me, and in the end, I was detained for more than three hours. The place where I was found could have been found from the outside, so if the police had found me, the hearing would have been much more difficult, no doubt.”

The police then filed a user disclosure request with “Anyca. Since it is unclear how long the sachet has been there, they are working on obtaining information on drivers who have rented the car in the past few months to identify the culprits.

The rented Geléndez was being bought and sold without permission

In June 2009, FRIDAY published an article titled “I rented a car on ‘Anyca’ and it was listed on Jimottee! The victim was a luxury sports car renter. The victim’s GT-R, a luxury sports car that she rented out, was put up for sale without her permission, and a used car dealer made the winning bid. The culprit is still unknown.

In fact, there were other users who had their cars almost sold by “Anyca” during this period. Mr. Takashi Yamamoto (pseudonym), owner of a Mercedes-Benz G-Class (Gelendewagen), recalls his experience.

The M.O. was complicated and sophisticated,” he recalls. First, the perpetrators hired a part-time worker for 50,000 yen a day, claiming that he was ‘undercover investigator for an automobile auction company. To prevent the part-timer from filing a complaint with the police, they even set up a fake training course for the auction company to make the part-timer believe that it was a legitimate job, not a black market job. He also had the part-timers register with “Anyca” and share my slopes with the culprits.

The perpetrator had concluded a sales contract for my slopes at Jimotte without my permission. I heard that the purchaser of the slope was summoned all the way from Kyushu to a parking lot in Akasaka, Tokyo, with 9 million yen in cash. The man who showed up in my slope was a man calling himself “Tezuka, an administrative scrivener,” who claimed to be an “agent for the transaction. However, at the last minute, the buyer noticed something was wrong and contacted me, the documented owner, and the Akasaka police station. Tezuka fled just before the police arrived, but both the money and the slope were somehow safe.

The author also interviewed the person who had been complicit with the part-timer, but in the end, the part-timer was not paid for his work.

Drinking troubles also occurred

Finally, we come to the “drunk driving” scene. This was discovered when Makoto Mitsui (a pseudonym), a resident of Saitama Prefecture, checked the driver’s license camera after receiving back a Mercedes-Benz he had lent to an “Anyca” driver. He said that the person he rented it to had a very bad attitude and did not return the car until well after the scheduled return date.

The car was returned two days after the scheduled return date. And the inside of the car had marks from being smeared with alcohol, which are still there now as stains. …… It’s still sticky and colored. And there was no apology whatsoever. It’s infuriating.

I was looking at the Dora Reco to see what the hell they did in the car, and I saw two people riding in the driver and passenger seats drinking canned chuhai and canned beer. Both day and night!　And the scene of them drinking while spilling alcohol in the car was also left in the driver’s video recorder. I guess they didn’t realize they were being recorded. The driver must have had at least two or more cans of chuhai.”

Driving while drunk, and not even cleaning up after spilling alcohol all over the car. …… It is frightening that such an insane person can register as a driver and rent a car as long as he has a driver’s license. Furthermore, “Anyca” is just a company that provides a matching service, so the company’s policy was to not get involved, saying, “Please resolve any problems between the parties concerned.

DeNA SOMPO Mobility, the operator of “Anyca,” responded to FRIDAY Digital’s inquiry as follows: “We are sorry to inform the press that the service has been terminated.

We are unable to accept any inquiries from the press due to the termination of the service.

In addition to the malicious user problems described above, there were also a number of fraudulent incidents by the owners. One of the most common was “There was a scratch on the door. You have to pay 100,000 yen for the repair” and so on.

Needless to say, in the three cases introduced here, it is the users who are most at fault. However, the lack of an established mechanism to regulate them may have been one of the reasons why the “Anyca” service was terminated. Personal car sharing is a dreamlike service that, if operated correctly, is both convenient and inexpensive. However, the reality is that there are still many challenges to overcome in order to build a service that anyone can use with peace of mind.