Planning Holiday in USA - Car Hire, Airport advice

dickydonkin

StuieUK34 wrote: »

Goto Netflights.com (for Texas) for car hire... If using Dollar, you will see there is the 'platinum' insurance option, which translates to: Tank of fuel and additional drivers. Should be no excess too
sweet!

Yeah - Netflights are pretty good and their prices are competitive, although I only use them for cars in L.A. plus all of the insurances are included in the pre-paid voucher, although fuel may need to be prepaid - depending on what rental company or option you select.

One word of caution though, I made the mistake of using Thrifty recently (no fault of Netflights) and if you are not savvy with US car rentals, they will attempt (vigorously) to get you to purchase 'add ons' you don't need.

They also attempted to add on another 20 odd dollars for fuel on return after already having an invoice for the pre paid tank when I picked it up - fortunately, I checked this before leaving and it was rectified. A really awful company - avoid if possible.

xycom1

getmore4less wrote: »

Our last trip we found Hertz was the best for our 1 way hire in the US and they include spouce as an extra driver for free.

This depends on the state that you're renting in. We rented from Hertz in CA and it included spouse as FOC additional driver.

photome

cubegame wrote: »

For car rentals, use a screen scraper like www.travelsupermarket.com www.kayak.co.uk or www.carrentals.co.uk

Netflights as suggested by others are rarely all that cheap but it's worth checking.

Parking at Heathrow is normally pretty cheap compared to other airports. Two weeks for £40 is possible.

Just wondered why you say netflights are rarely all that cheap as I have found them and Carhire 3000 to be the cheapest most of the time

Goldielocks

We usually use Car Hire Planet (https://www.carhireplanet) as they search through all the main suppliers like Avis and Hertz etc to get you the best price.
Last time I hired a car in Cyprus, I got upgraded as well to a car in the next band up - which was automatic (I had said manual) ...so that was a nice bonus!

dzug1

fiish wrote: »

Hi,

g. As it is a morning flight we are catching we probably want to stay at a nearby hotel the night before flying, is it worth taking up one of those parking+hotel deals? Would the hotel car parks be more or less secure?

The majority of these deals don't include parking AT the hotel, but provide you with a voucher for an airport car park, most of which are secure.

Where parking at the hotel is included, at the ones I've used (Park Inn, Crowne Plaza) it hasn't been secure, but the car came to no harm.

They are usually good value as opposed to buying separately.

old_motters

Have fun in Texas!

fiish

Thanks for all the advice.

Another question with regard to car rental, are there any real savings to be made by booking and paying in advance as opposed to just making a reservation and paying at the counter?

ferf1223

fiish wrote: »

Thanks for all the advice.

Another question with regard to car rental, are there any real savings to be made by booking and paying in advance as opposed to just making a reservation and paying at the counter?

In my experience, yes...and I'm not sure how easy it is to make a reservation which includes all the insurance waivers you're likely to want and just have a reservation, without actually booking and paying in advance? You could make a reservation directly with the agency in the US in some cases...but it won't always include all insurance waivers and once those are added on locally, the cost is going to go up - in our experience sometimes more than double (dollar.com) or will be a lot more expensive (hertz.com gives a discount for pre-paying).

Also, with CH3000, if I remember correctly, you can only cancel with no penalty if you have chosen the one-off payment at the time you make the reservation. If you choose to pay a deposit at the time of booking with the balance to be paid later and you want to cancel, you lose the deposit.

Reservations which are fully pre-paid at the time of booking may be cancelled free of charge up to 48 hours before the commencement of the rental. Where a reservation originally secured with a deposit payment (Deposit Booking) is cancelled more than 48 hours prior to the pick up time then a cancellation fee equal to the deposit amount will be charged.

So there it makes more sense (we think) to pay up front...plus we prefer to get as much of the holiday cost out of the way before the holiday.

fiish

Thanks again.

Have made a booking through dollar.co.uk, they had a better quote than CH3000 for the additional drivers + fuel + insurance package. Also used dollar.com just to have a look, and it looks like dollar.co.uk applies a nice fair exchange rate (the £ appreciating over the last 2 weeks made the booking cheaper even though the $ price had gone up).

StuieUK34

Told u so