POD user tips — bulletin #4, October 2025

Hi from the POD team! This is October’s update for our users, right at the end of the month because we’ve been waiting to be able to give you some big news…

Todmorden estate car! POD are delighted to finally be able to announce… at long last… the Todmorden estate car has arrived!

The blue estate car is fundamentally the same as the red car from Bridge Lanes in Hebden so you’ll find it the same to drive.

And the main difference from the smaller Yaris is that it has a start button — just keep the key in your pocket!

It has the same features as the red car, including roof bars that can take our roof box or bike racks, and inside, a roll-up safety guard for dogs. Because of course, it’s our estate cars that have been designated pet-friendly, with the hatchbacks being animal-free to protect humans with allergies.

We do just need to let you know about one quirk which we will iron out as soon as we possibly can. With the new car, when you lock it at the end of your hire, it will lock, but the app will wrongly say it has failed to connect, and offer buttons “OK” or “Contact support”. Before you contact support, please try this:

Simply click “OK”, then “Lock” a second time. In all our testing, this works, and allows you to end your booking.

Refuelling

A couple of times lately we’ve noticed cars left with less than ¼ tank (25%) of fuel. Please remember that we ask all users to leave at least a ¼ tank, so that the next user after you won’t get stranded. Volunteers do top the cars up, but we need to rely on each of you in our community as well, in case there’s a busy period for the car before a volunteer gets to it.

To recap on what we mention at induction meetings, we don’t require you to return the car full or even with the same amount of fuel you found it at, but we really appreciate if you fill it up any time that you are passing the petrol station and/or have time to go there, to keep things going smoothly.

If it gets down to ¼ and you absolutely don’t have time to fill it, please at least let us know by email (urgent@pod-caldervalley.co.uk). We are able to see low fuel in our software as well, but it’s extremely helpful if we get the email nudge to alert us promptly.

If you’ve not used the fuel cards before, here’s a recap: the petrol station should ask you the registration number (written on the card wallet) and ask you to insert the card and type in the car’s mileage (instead of a PIN). The mileage is on the bottom left of the Yaris dash, or next to “ODO” on the Corolla dash. Don’t worry if you only remember an approximate mileage when you get to the till, that will be sufficient!

Lost Property When we find an item that’s been left behind we try to contact the last user directly. But sometimes there may have been several users before we find the item, making it hard to identify the owner — so we have a small collection of lost property. Please let us know if any of these items are yours!Amber-coloured ear-ring (pictured)Ear-buds in case (pictured)Angled tool with red handle (pictured)USB power bank in box (pictured)Convex mirror (probably for observing kids in back seat)Portable game console (for the owner’s security, we’ll ask the claimant to specify the make and colour of this)

Water saving at Todmorden Our fantastic volunteers have installed a water butt at the POD shed, in the car park of the Working Mens’ Club in Todmorden.This will help in looking after the garden they have restored there, and of course can also be used for cleaning the cars.In fact, just this week they achieved our first sustainable wash of a car, using only rainwater!If you’d like to find out more about the opportunities to get involved in the vital work of our volunteers, just drop us a line at any time, at info@pod-caldervalley.co.uk and we’ll be delighted to invite you to a volunteering social session to find out more!

Reduced subscription rate for your household We recently launched a reduced subscription of £3 per month for additional users in the same household. That’s available so long as there is one user in the household on a standard subscription.Remember, if you’d like to share driving on a trip, it doesn’t matter which of you booked, so long as every driver has a current subscription. (That is vital, to remain insured.)We’ve attempted to notify existing users where we know they form a household, but of course we won’t necessarily have this information! So if you are existing shared-household users who are eligible, but you’ve not heard from us, it is fine for one of you to cancel your full-price subscription and take out a fresh one at the discounted rate.

Refer a friend!

If you’re loving the flexibility of POD, perhaps you’d like to share the news with a friend? We would certainly love to have your help in spreading the word, and helping ever more people to have great transport options available to them, perhaps even taking more cars off the road if they no longer need to maintain one.

If you refer a friend who joins POD, just ask them to let us know by email, making sure it’s clear to us who you and they are!

Then when they make their first hire, we’ll credit your POD account with £20 to spend on future hires!

And finally…We must appeal to all users to remember to respect the cars and keep them nice for the whole community.Recently we’ve heard several times that one of the hatchbacks has had obvious smells from vapes / e-cigarettes. These are not permitted in our rules. They can leave bad smells, cause health problems for other users, and cause damage to the cars. Anyone found to be using these in the cars will, unfortunately, need to be fined for the cost of deep-cleaning the car.On a related note, we would be very grateful if everyone would remember to report all damage. We recently had to take the white car from Market Place for repair because buttons on the centre console had fallen down inside the console, possibly by being stepped on if someone had to climb across the front of the car! If you do have any mishap, or find anything on the car broken, please do tell us, because then we’ve a better chance of getting it fixed before the next user needs the car. As a community scheme we do of course need to protect our finances by charging for damages, but also for your benefit we do keep such charges to the absolute minimum possible.