Fuel Policy on Car Rentals

pvt

Having been caught out myself, and seeing the comments on here about being made to pay for a tank of fuel and return empty on car rental, I am very wary when booking.

But I recently found myself on a winner.

I hired a car in Las Vegas for just 24 hours. Usinig CarHire3k I paid £44 (less £4 back from quidco!) for a luxury car from Dollar including the first tank of gas and any number of additional drivers included in a Gold package.

We drove the car pretty near dry on a long one day sightseeing trip. I estimate we used about 19 gallons of fuel (in fact had to put $5 worth in to be confident of getting the car back without pushing it!).

At the time, pump price was $4 per gallon, give or take a couple of cents, so the tank of fuel we used was worth about $75. Which was more than I had paid for the rental in the first place.

Bargains are there if you read the Ts&Cs carefully and know exactly what you are committing to.

pompeyrich

Most of the UK rental brokers/agents offer an insurance upgrade above the std package. The upgrade costs around £5 a day but includes all additional drivers and a full tank of fuel. As you found this is VERY good value on short term rentals and not bad for the usual 2 weeks in Florida.

The optimum rental period is 3 days as rates are usually slightly less per day on rentals of 3 or more days. In Orlando, A Chrysler 300 is £32ish a day for 1-3 days and £23ish a day for longer rentals.

Whether it is worth booking 2 or 3 shorter term rentals, to exploit this loophole, rather than 1 single 14 day rental really depends on whether you want the hassle of swapping the car over and wasting a valuble hour or 2 doing so.

neilbond007

That's what I always used to do when living in the UK and holidaying in the US.
Hire a car for a couple of days with the free gas upgrade, drop it back at Dollar empty and pick up another one. Especially easy in Vegas as they have desks at a number of hotels.