Car hire - refundable excess worth it or not?

TeePrinter

try budget rental, i think it is https://www.budget.co.uk.

pretty cheap for a basic car and i checked loads. Good for late flights as the office is open till 11pm so they don't charge extra like some do for this service. Always give your flight number so they wait for you incase your flight is late (so they say).

You can pay an excess waiver for 6 euros a day, for a 5 day holiday I might as well.

They don't seem to accept many points cards though, only some airlines but not BA or any Hotels.

jumpingjackd

TeePrinter wrote:

try budget rental, i think it is https://www.budget.co.uk.

pretty cheap for a basic car and i checked loads. Good for late flights as the office is open till 11pm so they don't charge extra like some do for this service. Always give your flight number so they wait for you incase your flight is late (so they say).

You can pay an excess waiver for 6 euros a day, for a 5 day holiday I might as well.

They don't seem to accept many points cards though, only some airlines but not BA or any Hotels.

Got a reasonable quote from them for 4 days hire in UK but excess waiver is £10 per day. Seem to be getting a better deal with Auto Europe or Holiday Autos who are quoting £2.50 excess per day.

samedan_2

https://www.insurance4carhire.com will cover you for all car hire XS charges,in Europe, for under £50 a year. This covers as many rentals as you make in the year and, depending on who you hire from, can pay for itself in one 7 day rental. I have used them in the past, and made a claim, which was paid in full although it took a month to clear, No connection other than as a satisfied customer.

kopite4eva

http://www.all-inclusive-car-hire.com

They don't cover you for windscreen / tyres but for £10 extra you can cover yourself, so if you have the car hire for 1 day or 31 days it's still only a tenner.

Another tip is to ask for Crown where it's available, send them an email when you get there, this way you just have to return the car with the same amount in the tank as when you picked it up.

A 7 day trip to Portugual last week in a Fiesta came to £70 plus £10 for tyres/windscreen.

The same trip with Full CDW (not including tyres/windscreen) came to £87.50 for an equivalent car with holidayautos.

Ldn_2

You can compare rates on Car Hire Search and get a quote from insurance4carhire at the same time. It's always worth checking the t&c's when booking a vehicle, just click on the cars name after you obtain a quote.

Russ66

Hi,
has anyone had any experience of https://www.economycarrentals.com ?

They seem to be very reasonable and apparently charge no excesses at all.

I have booked through https://www.auto-europe.co.uk for the last five or six trips and highly recommend them. However, https://www.economycarrentals.com seem to beat them hands down at the moment.

Any Thoughts??

Cheers Folks.

Angel007_2

Just booked car hire to Italy with autoeurope with refundable excess for damage and theft. Damage excess is £150 whilst theft excess is £250. I therefore don't require excess insurance I'd like to get cover just for those extras like tyres, windscreen etc. Is there a cheap way of covering this?:

samedan_2

I am not quite sure what you mean by refundable! What matters is what the hire car company thinks. What I think is meant is that you are going to give a credit card swipe for those 2 aspects of your insurance and if you don't damage the car or get it stolen you will get a refund ie no charge, If the car is damaged or stolen they will take the money off your credit card and you won't get a refund. If they were going to give you money back they wouldn't bother taking it off you in the first place would they? If you hire a car more than once a year this XS insurance is worth it IMHO. I am hiring a car for 4 days in Ireland, in August and there is a 900 Euro XS which I can cover with them for 30 euros a day. I can buy a year's cover for these XSs for £49 so it is a good deal for me as I am going to Europe 2 times more this year and hiring a merc on one of the trips.

Angel007_2

I believe you are referring to the collision damage waiver where you are charged the excess blocked on the card in the event of your hire car being damaged. Be careful as some car hire companies block as much as 900 euros on your card regardless of whether you have insurance. We have agreed with our broker to have a 'refundable excess' for theft or damage. In this instance you fill in a report from the car hire company and get a police report where relevant. This is handed in to the car hire company. You send a copy to your car hire broker e.g. auto europe who then refund the excess and any credit card interest charged by your lender. It is important that this is detailed in the terms and conditions of hire.

We are therefore after an insurance just to cover the windscreens, tyres etc. I understand from kopite4eva that you can cover this for around £10 - is this from the actual car hire company, in our case Europcar?

Last year we got a fine on the motorway in Italy as we inadvertantly drove through the automatic tollboth for heavy goods vehicles and the lorry behind us wouldn't let us through. We got a wapping fine, we wrote to auto europe and they refunded that off our credit card.

Angel007_2

Hi Russ66

I got a good quote from economycarrentals but went back to autoeurope and spoke to their 'beta rate' department - and they beat economycarrentals quote and matched their terms. Carhire 3000 will also beat quotes however I've found that the excess (which will be refunded) from auto europe is £250 for theft and £145 for damage compared to (from memory) about 800 - 900 euros from Car Hire 3000.

Try Martin's haggling it wins hands down!!!