Cheap car hire article discussion

geeooff

I'm taking a trip arriving at an airport 10am Sat & leaving 11:15am Tuesday.

If I book a car collected 10:30 & return it 4 days later at 10:30, then its a 3 day hire at say £140. But if I dare enter 'collect 10:15', it costs another day. Say, £40 extra.

I guess its obvious, but perhaps worth a mention? Most flights leave an hour or so after arrival, so just mechanically entering your flight times will always lead to an extra days' car hire. Also, I had rather expected to be charged 4 days car hire, not 3, for my 4 day trip.

Perhaps if it saved a extra day's hire charge, it might be worth considering arriving back at your airport a leisurely hour or two early?

I also guess that few car hire people quibble if you turned-up say 30 minutes before your booked time to collect your car? & I've never been charged for returning one a little after my booked time.

geeooff

I noticed my card had been hit with a big, unspecified, surcharge by Hertz, Friedrichshafen, very many weeks after I'd returned their car.

Telling them I held 12 timed snaps of the returned car inside & out, meant they'd no leg to stand on, but I was amazed a reputable firm's procedures allow their branches to slap-on unspecified surcharges without any correspondence or invoice to explain why.

I realized, however, that I'd deleted those photos as pointless some weeks earlier. I always take 60 seconds to photo a car inside & out & I now keep them for a few months.

Phil_Jay

Hello ,If You,re going to hire a car in Alicanti Spain If you use Dickmanns car hire and you don,t take out there overpriced extra insurance they will stiff you , I hired with them in mid June this year had stand alone insurance £17 for 9 days Dickmanns took 1,030 euro deposit £783 on return told will have to wait 20 days for refund still not repaid .BEWARE OF DICKMANNS SHYSTERS .

ben_dp10

Hi Everyone.

Anyone heard of airportrentalcars.com

It is a US comparison website.

I Searched for the same dates/car on Holidayautos.com.

Cheapest quotes I found on Airport Rental Cars was $374 (around £250) which was with Budget. cheapest i found on Holiday Autos were at least £380 (cheapest not being with Budget - Budget were coming up at around £500).

Because it is such a huge saving i am a little worried something is wrong. When you book using Airport Rental Cars all you do is reserve the vehicle. Nothing is paid for until you turn up at the airport.

I'm worried i'll be charged a different price when i turn up.

Anyone got experience with using a foreign comparison website to book a car as a UK resident?

Thanks in advance

Sue64

I am going to Turkey soon - Dalaman airport- and want to hire a car but we don't have a credit card , on making enquiries they all say we have to have one, does anyone know of a way we can hire a car without a credit card please?!

zippy08

geeooff wrote: »

Here's a suggested nr.34 for your Car Hire Savings page.... It's an odd one!.... Check if your arrival airport has two exits that lead to different countries?

My ticket for a Swiss driving weekend, mid Sept, is to Basel Airport, Switzerland. But the Basel Mulhouse Freiburg Airport's terminal has both Swiss & French exit doors from its baggage reclaim.

I put Switzerland, 'Basel Airport' into a car hire comparison site & was quoted £83 for 3 days. I was about to click 'buy' when it occurred to me to try entering France, 'Mulhouse Airport' & the same site quoted me £31 (a miserly £27.70 after cashbacks). If I added insurance cover, perhaps the price gap would be even larger?

I noticed Geneva Airport also had 2 exits last year; I checked for the same weekend & Hertz 'Geneva Airport, Switzerland' charges £131. However Hertz 'Geneva Airport, France' charges £68. Same airport, same Fiat 500, same 3 days in Sept - :AIts like uncovering a holy grail of moneysaving!

I wonder if there are other airports where this trick works? (perhaps Gibraltar Airport, a stone's throw from Spain?)

PS; I guess there's more saving when returning? By approaching from France rather than Switzerland, I assume filling the tank with French fuel may be a tad cheaper?

PPS; If I intended to use Swiss motorways (which I don't), my French car may not display a Swiss motorway windscreen vignette. But a full year's pass only costs £32

Am I missing downsides I've not considered?

I'm sure you've not missed it, but for the benefit of others - it should be noted that if you exit the same airport using the car rental company based in, and hence the exit based in a particular country, then at the very least, you will have to spend some time finding your way out of that country and to the country you originally intended to visit.
So to use a hypothetical example, if you were going to Switzerland, and booked a car with Hertz France because it was cheaper, you will actually be on French soil when you exit the airport. As you can imagine, French motorways will head towards France, so don't assume that you will easily get on the motorway to Switzerland.
Not the end of the world, especially if you know what you're doing and have planned your route, but hopefully useful to know.

Dawnie_P

Regarding the Section 75 if something goes wrong on your car hire. I rented through Traveljigsaw a few years back and the hire firm was Locauto. A month after I returned they put 860 euros on my credit card. When I complained they said I had damaged the car and sent me photos of the windscreen wiper dragged down the back of the car - it was not returned like that and I had informed them that the rear windscreen wiper had never worked from day 1. When I complained to HSBC, the credit card company - they said they could do nothing. I didn't know about Section 75 until recently. Is it too late to do something nearly 6 years later?
I still have the same credit card!

Hern

ben_dp10 wrote: »

Hi Everyone.

Anyone heard of airportrentalcars.com

It is a US comparison website.

I Searched for the same dates/car on Holidayautos.com.

Cheapest quotes I found on Airport Rental Cars was $374 (around £250) which was with Budget. cheapest i found on Holiday Autos were at least £380 (cheapest not being with Budget - Budget were coming up at around £500).

Because it is such a huge saving i am a little worried something is wrong. When you book using Airport Rental Cars all you do is reserve the vehicle. Nothing is paid for until you turn up at the airport. I'm worried i'll be charged a different price when i turn up.
Anyone got experience with using a foreign comparison website to book a car as a UK resident? Thanks in advance

I've only just caught up with this post, but am fervently hoping you didn't fall for this.

A rental car comparison site has no legal liability and no involvement whatsoever in the contract ultimately agreed between the hirer and the renter. Such a site can quote any figure it feels like, the on-screen figure means nothing until you've actually obtained a quote from the renter itself. However:

A contract between hirer and renter doesn't exist until it's signed and paid for. So even if you get your quote from the hirer you've found on a comparison site, and even if you get an email confirming that quote, it means. . . nothing at all.

Think about it. How're you going to enforce the legal agreement you say you have with a US rental company without bringing an action in an American court? You certainly can't sue 'em over here.

Same goes for any and every other unsigned unpaid hire contract: turn up at an airport (most likely in Spain) waving an "email confirmation" and the hirer can still charge you whatever it feels like AND force you to take all kinds of extortionate extras if you need the car.

As before: what're you gonna do: sue a Spanish car hire company in a Spanish court? Hope to get a hearing -- never mind your money back -- not later than 25 years from now?? Dream on.

If you're seeing something online that looks too cheap. . . ask yourself why. Because if you don't do so then, you'll certainly be doing so when you turn up at the renter's office with your worthless 'email confirmation' . . .

MarcOwen

Hi, I hope someone has some information on this.
I've just come back from a holiday in Bulgaria and had a hire car through BA-Avis. My question revolves around the insurance offered to me, it was made to understand upon picking up the car that should I damage it, I would be liable for any damage less than €500 and the insurance would not be involved unless over, therefore making the CDW + the extra excess insurance bought before the holiday useless!

Is there any way of insuring a holiday hire car that isn't just excess insurance?

Luckily I was fine and didn't have any bumps or any problems with Avis but I must say this information at the start of the holiday freaked me out... not enough to buy there €250 super cover though.

eDicky

MarcOwen wrote: »

Hi, I hope someone has some information on this.
I've just come back from a holiday in Bulgaria and had a hire car through BA-Avis. My question revolves around the insurance offered to me, it was made to understand upon picking up the car that should I damage it, I would be liable for any damage less than €500 and the insurance would not be involved unless over, therefore making the CDW + the extra excess insurance bought before the holiday useless!

Is there any way of insuring a holiday hire car that isn't just excess insurance?

Luckily I was fine and didn't have any bumps or any problems with Avis but I must say this information at the start of the holiday freaked me out... not enough to buy there €250 super cover though.

It was that extra excess insurance you bought that covered you for that €500 excess. Isn't that what you bought it for? Why should it be useless? In the eyes of Avis you would be liable - that extra insurance is nothing to do with them. They would charge you if you damaged the car and then you have to claim it back on that separate insurance. You did everything right, including resisting their attempts to scare you into buying their expensive 'super cover', except that you forgot why you bought the separate excess cover..!