Cheap car hire article discussion

MarcOwen

I was told that any damage up to €500 would not be repaired via their insurance company effectively classing this potential €500 as "not an excess" therefore I wouldn't be able to claim it back from any extra excess insurance policy.
If the damage was over €500 then they would use the insurance company, So I humorously commented to the hire car lady that If I accidentally scratch it I should just park it in the nearest tree just to make sure they use the insurance. She didn't laugh .

NiftyDigits

MarcOwen wrote: »

I was told that any damage up to €500 would not be repaired via their insurance company effectively classing this potential €500 as "not an excess" therefore I wouldn't be able to claim it back from any extra excess insurance policy.
If the damage was over €500 then they would use the insurance company, So I humorously commented to the hire car lady that If I accidentally scratch it I should just park it in the nearest tree just to make sure they use the insurance. She didn't laugh .

Sounds like nonsense.

S_Nutkin

Hi Guys,

Booking a car for florida, and done the comparisons and found a good deal for us.

on ebookers it notes the following.

Your price includes:
Additonal Liability Insurance.
Airport Service Charge.
Collision Damage Waiver and theft protection with No Excess To Pay.
Location Service Charge.
Local Tax.
Third Party Liability.
Unlimited Mileage.


Your Price Excludes:
1 Additional Driver.
Child Seat Baby
Fuel (Must be Returned with Full Tank or a Refilling Charge will Apply).
Navigational System GPS
Out of opening hours surcharge. Charged and payable locally
Personal Accident Insurance.
Personal Effects Protection.
Underage Driver Charges are not included, and are payable locally. Underage driver ages vary from supplier to supplier, but can start at 21 and go up to 25 years of age, depending on the category of car being rented.

Am I right in thinking that is all the insurance covered and no excess to pay etc etc?

Just want to make sure everything in sorted beforehand.

Poetic_Justice

So I want to buy insurance excess cover from my hire which is from the 9th to the 17th August (10am pick up to 10am drop off).

I've found that if I enter these times to the moneymaxim comparison site linked in the article it will charge me for 9 full days.

If I adjust the drop off time to 9:45am it takes a day off of the price ("Policy calculated in 24 hour periods rather than calendar days - this price reflects the pick-up and drop-off times selected: 8 days").

Is this a neat little trick* to save some money for an extra 15 mins of cover I will almost certainly not need (providing I drop the car off early) or am I risking going a full 24 hour period less of cover?

*although it's hardly a trick, otherwise I'd be paying a full day I wouldn't use with other insurers who don't specify pick up times.

Stephl

Hi guys

I'm going to the U.S. And planning to pick up in Philadelphia and drop off in Miami. On getting to the payment stage on all websites a hefty fee is added for a different drop off point $500+, or in some cases the fee isn't added but a notice saying a fee will be payable of drop off with no indication of the size of the fee.

Does anyone know of how to avoid this fee or ways around it?
Thanks

Blue264

Stephl wrote: »

Does anyone know of how to avoid this fee or ways around it?
Thanks

In short...No.

The car hire company have to get the vehicle back to base, which obviously incurs a cost. This cost is always passed on to the client.

One of mny friends regularly needs a car that he can drop off at a different location. After a year or so of doing this and incurring the additional costs, he started buying a car and selling it at the other end, sometimes for a profit.

Moto2

At work we have a contract with National, part of the deal is they waive any one way fees.
HR reckon it shouldn't be any different in the US than Europe, I'm yet to try it though.
Just check if your company has a deal with anyone and wether or not you can use it for a better rate and wether or not they get any perks like free one ways - you never know.

EssexExile

Blue264 wrote: »

The car hire company have to get the vehicle back to base, which obviously incurs a cost.

That strikes me as just an excuse, we often hire in The States & often the rental lot is full of out of state cars, they don't seem in any rush to get them back where they came from.

One way fees have always been substantial but they seem to have gone to a new level lately.

Murphy_The_Cat

Stephl wrote: »

Hi guys

Does anyone know of how to avoid this fee or ways around it?
Thanks

The only partial way that I know of is very time consuming and involves making multiple dummy bookings until you find the lowest oneway fee.
Also, you need to be awre of the many, imaginitive and varied taxes that will be applied to the one way charge that will increase the cost.
As a rough guide, on my recent hire, the $250 oneway charge ended up around the £240 mark.

This is a really old thread, but may have some handy pointers in it - but please check the upto date status on them.

nardberg

Hi,

While collecting a prepaid car from Pisa through GoldCar, and having purchased my own Collision Damage Waiver cover, I had to endure a 10 minute circular argument where I was told repeatedly "If you don't take our insurance you can't take the car". I was shown a pad of paper on which increasingly large sums were written while half-Italian was garbled at me. After saying No thanks for 10 minutes, he relented "OK so you don't want this?" I agreed and he crossed the 120E figure off the pad.

6 days later while preparing to return the car, I opened the pack I'd been given and found an itemised invoice with my signature printed on the bottom - I had not been shown this paper except for it being handed to me folded into a sleeve with the keys on top while I was being told where to collect my car from. What I expected to be 70E for an additional driver was actually over 350E including a full tank of petrol and their premium insurance offering. Sure enough my bank confirmed these had been charged to my CC (over £250), not even blocked out.

I'm obviously furious, as I feel I've been thoroughly conned. At no point did they remotely explain that I was buying a full tank of petrol, and I clearly said No to their insurance. I don't feel that I signed that agreement as much as they just printed my signature on the bottom?

Anyone had similar experiences? I'm curious as to where I stand. Obviously my first regret is ever using GoldCar as it seems their Facebook page and the internet at large, is full of such stories about their abusive charging.

Cheers,
Martin