Van hire questions

pitkin2020

they will accept it back early, just make sure someone is there to accept it back

mark5

I've never had problems returning rental vehicles early, I always rent from the local Ford Dealership though, they have a large secure compound at the rear of the building so storage isnt a problem for them.

toasterman

Had it down to between a Vauxhall Vivaro through National or an LDV Maxus from HolidayAutos.
HolidayAutos has the £11.50 cashback through Quidco (6.5% for National), is a slightly bigger van, is £4.51 cheaper anyway, and has a £600 insurance excess, instead of National's £1000 (hopefully I won't be needing either).
It's rather annoying that all of HolidayAutos' locations just say like "downtown" though. Where in Bristol is that? National gives full addresses of all their branches.

Both have phone numbers listed on their websites, both rip-off 0871 numbers! Found a non-0871 number on holidayautos website ("if you are phoning from outside the uk"...), and phoned it to ask the location.
She immediately said "downtown means the city centre", but when I was given the address, I certainly wouldn't say it was the city centre. City-centre..ish, but if I was in Cabot Circus and hiring a car, I wouldn't be pleased to be given a BS8 address.

So essentially National won it, because they have a branch just round the corner from where I'm moving to, which is easier to get to/from here. Although it has a higher excess, there's less chance of me damaging it on big main roads, and dropping it back the same day if we finish moving at 5.30pm is possible, whereas it wouldn't be with HolidayAutos.

Thanks for all your help everyone.

ohyeahitssorcy

£600 excess :eek:

£1000 excess :eek:

I would be wrapping it in bubble wrap and driving at 5 mile an hour :rotfl:

£25 first hour £15 per hour after that for man with a van vs £600 excess hmm thats a hard one

toasterman

ohyeahitssorcy wrote: »

£600 excess :eek:
£1000 excess :eek:
I would be wrapping it in bubble wrap and driving at 5 mile an hour :rotfl:

£25 first hour £15 per hour after that for man with a van vs £600 excess hmm thats a hard one

5mph?! Talk about reckless driver!
No, I'll be having a proper Sunday-drive/kerb-crawl later this week.

I pondered getting a man with van to move the odd big bits, but then we'd spend the next 2 days going back and forward with car loads of the rest (neither of our cars is massive), and this move has been such a long time coming, we both want to get it over and done with now.

kolin_2

i'm moving too on saturday, have managed to find an independant company in leeds wh will let me hire a van for £48 inc. VAT/ins, for the whole saturday, i.e. pickup between 8-9 and drop off between 5-6pm.

which I think is excellent. There aren't enough companies that offer reasonable van hire on a weekend. especially if you only need it for one day.

got a long wheel base (2.8m), so i'm asuming it's Transit size.

jitters

For my last couple of moves I've used National (aka Europcar) and taken out their Master Cover Plus policy for £15. This reduces your damage liability (excesses) to nil.

I also always haggle with them over the price of hire and taking the policy gives more maneuverability. I hired a Citroen Dispatch (vivaro sized) for £50 last time.(EDIT: thursday hire though)

No, I'll be having a proper Sunday-drive/kerb-crawl later this week.

Its other people I always worry about!

Good luck with the move!

toasterman

In the end I paid the extra £15.33 for the zero-excess.
It came to about £65, including the cost of the diesel I put back in it, that we'd used.

Despite stopping for lunch breaks and being incredibly unprepared by not really having any packing cases available, we've still moved the bulk majority of stuff in the last two days, and it is a more complicated move as we were moving from two addresses into one.
Also, I had assumed the van would be spotlessly clean inside. I ended up attempting to parcel tape bin bags onto my mattress to keep it off the (dirty) floor. Wood flooring in a hire van seems like a terrible idea really, because it's not really washable.
Last van I drove just had a metal floor with anchor points (and a couple of holes). You could just hose it clean afterwards.

That said, it was still a huge help. We only had it for the first day, but we couldn't have moved without it really.

Thanks for everyone's advice on the forum.