Guide

Let customers collect without you there

For after-hours and unstaffed pickups. The customer does the handover on their phone, and only gets the lockbox code once the photos and the bond are done.

5 min read

This guide answers

  • Can customers collect a vehicle without staff?
  • How do after-hours pickups work?
  • How do I set up a lockbox?

Settings → Self-collection. An optional module, off until switched on.

What the customer does

They open a link on their phone at the vehicle and work through:

  1. A photo of themselves, if you require it.
  2. Photos of the outside of the vehicle: front, back and both sides. All four. The code is not revealed until every one is taken.
  3. A bond hold, on their saved card or a new one.
  4. The lockbox code, revealed only after the first three are done.

Then, once they are in the car with the key, the odometer, the dashboard and the fuel gauge. Those are asked for on the "good to go" screen and never hold up the collection: a customer who genuinely cannot read the odometer can press I can't read the odometer right now and whatever was captured is kept.

The dashboard and fuel photos come after the key on purpose. Before the key the car is locked and the cluster is dark, so a photo taken then was never a usable record of the fuel level.

What you control

  • Which locations allow it — off per location by default.
  • A window before the booked pickup time when the link becomes usable.
  • A geofence — how close to the branch they have to be. Roughly 200 metres by default.

Each vehicle also needs its lockbox code recorded, or it cannot be collected this way.

Why the order matters

The outside photos come before the code deliberately. Once the customer has the keys, your evidence of the vehicle's condition is whatever they chose to take. Before they have the keys, it is a condition of getting them. The inside shots are the exception only because they cannot be taken from outside a locked car.

Same with the bond: the hold is placed before the code is revealed, and if the hold fails the whole thing rolls back rather than handing over a vehicle with no security.

If a customer gets stuck

A customer who denies location access is shown a "call us" message rather than being silently blocked, so you get a phone call instead of a bad review.

If somebody gets the code but does not finish the odometer step, Glovebox raises an alert for you after a grace period, and you can complete it from the booking.

If it did not work

  • The link does not work for the customer. Check they are inside the window and the geofence, that the location has self-collection on, and that the vehicle has a lockbox code.
  • It is not in Settings. The module is off. See Turn Glovebox features on and off.
  • Set up and release bonds A bond is the security amount you hold against a hire. This covers the default amount, the difference between an authorisation hold and a capture, and how long after return the hold is released.
  • Set up pickup and return locations Locations are the branches customers choose when they book. This covers adding one, the two switches that decide whether it shows as a pickup or return point, and where to add delivery or one-way fees.

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