Save a LOT on car hire insurance

JillG

I'm going to Australia and will need to hire a car for 16 days. I found a reasonable price (£265) but their insurance and excess waivers bumped it up to £412! :eek: By buying my own cover separately, following the links from this site, I will be saving myself £92 - which will buy me an awful lot of amber nectar. So don't automatically accept the hire firm's insurance.

5tevie

On a similar note, we booked a 14 day holiday in Las Vegas for £229 each. That was for flight, hotel, all taxes and transfers plus car hire (NOT including car insurance) so we arrived and the first thing that the airport car rental staff did was offer us an upgrade to a better car. We accepted that 'cos it was free but then we got the insurance bill and we got a shock. If I remember correctly (this was around 1998) we had an initial charge of $35 per day inclusive of arrival and departure days. Then there was a fee for each day that the car was off the airport site which was about $2.70 per day. There was even a fee to drive the car away from the Airport of $15. It amounted to around $600 in total which HAD to be paid using a credit card. BTW, this wasn't some fly by night company. This was either Alamo or Dollar car Rental agencies.
We found out afterwards from another couple that if we had taken the basic car, the daily insurance was $22 which meant that the free upgrade actually cost us about $200.
Anyway, my main reason for writing here is that we went back to Las Vegas the following year but this time we were fore-warned. When we got to the airport we got on the bus going to our hotel rather than pick up a car at the airport. The next morning we went along to the Imperial hotel and went to the Alamo car rental agency booth. We explained that we were jet lagged when we arrived and there was no way that we though either of us would be safe to drive and could we collect our car from here instead of the airport. It was no problem at all and within minutes we were driving off in a mid priced, mid sized car having paid just $173 extra for insurance.

jewelly

Thanks for the tip JillG. I'm also going to Oz and am looking at car hire. Can you please tell me which hire company you will be using, and also where to buy my own insurance cover from?

Thanks in advance.

JillG

Jewelly, the car hire firm is Holiday Autos, which my husband used last year when he went - they are the cheapest but he got an additional discount through his Civil Service Members' Association. One of the good things about HA is that they don't have a depot at the airport, so you let them know when you've arrived and they come and pick you up, then at the end they drop you off and take the car away - saves a lot of hassle. I think that applies to all their depots but probably better to check.
The insurance is from worldwideinsure.com, and includes a couple of extras not offered by HA's insurance, such as undercarriage damage, which is advisable in Oz, and misfuelling and towing. And it turned out cheaper for me to take Annual Worldwide Insurance rather than Single Trip, which would have cost me £60. You can follow the links from the moneysavingexpert website.

5tevie, we found much the same thing when we went to the States, the first couple of places we stayed/things we did, we paid full price for, then discovered that if your first port of call is the local tourist office, you can save a lot of money because you can get discount vouchers.

jewelly

Thanks Gill. That's a great help. I will take a look.

Kilty_2

JillG wrote: »

One of the good things about HA is that they don't have a depot at the airport, so you let them know when you've arrived and they come and pick you up, then at the end they drop you off and take the car away - saves a lot of hassle. I think that applies to all their depots but probably better to check.

It may be different in Australia but in a lot of cases Holiday Autos will just give you a voucher for one of the big hire companies, I hired a car in the UK with them and got a voucher for Europcar.

With regards to seperate car hire excess insurance - are there any policies out there that will cover both cars and vans?

photome

5tevie wrote: »

On a similar note, we booked a 14 day holiday in Las Vegas for £229 each. That was for flight, hotel, all taxes and transfers plus car hire (NOT including car insurance) so we arrived and the first thing that the airport car rental staff did was offer us an upgrade to a better car. We accepted that 'cos it was free but then we got the insurance bill and we got a shock. If I remember correctly (this was around 1998) we had an initial charge of $35 per day inclusive of arrival and departure days. Then there was a fee for each day that the car was off the airport site which was about $2.70 per day. There was even a fee to drive the car away from the Airport of $15. It amounted to around $600 in total which HAD to be paid using a credit card. BTW, this wasn't some fly by night company. This was either Alamo or Dollar car Rental agencies.
We found out afterwards from another couple that if we had taken the basic car, the daily insurance was $22 which meant that the free upgrade actually cost us about $200.
Anyway, my main reason for writing here is that we went back to Las Vegas the following year but this time we were fore-warned. When we got to the airport we got on the bus going to our hotel rather than pick up a car at the airport. The next morning we went along to the Imperial hotel and went to the Alamo car rental agency booth. We explained that we were jet lagged when we arrived and there was no way that we though either of us would be safe to drive and could we collect our car from here instead of the airport. It was no problem at all and within minutes we were driving off in a mid priced, mid sized car having paid just $173 extra for insurance.

Hiring a car in Vegas from a UK broker including all insurances is usually the best/cheapest way, even cheaper than a "free car"