Goldcar bargain car hire, Spain

PhylPho

This post refers to the aggregator, Rhinocarhire. Doesn't mean I'm endorsing it, just that I've used Rhino several times for USA car rental and it's been fine, with discounts offered (particularly from Alamo) that have always been genuine.

We're off to Spain in May, go there every year. Car hire's never been a problem: we've either booked direct with an established 'big name' or found an intermediary offering a temporary special deal.

This year's Spanish sojourn sees us ambling over 1,000 miles around Spain, using the train. Various cities, various lengths of stay. But for one week, we're staying in Mojacar Pueblo, a white hill town we greatly enjoy.

We checked with Hertz for a week's Almerian rental, because we've never had a bad experience with Hertz anywhere in Spain. Prices for the week we want seemed a bit, well, pricey. but then Rhino emailed us to say it had a special Hertz deal. So. . . we've booked it.

Cost of hire of an Opel Astra for one week, Almeria airport pickup / back to Almeria airport, is £170.00 (GBP equivalent.)

One hundred and seventy quiddies though. It's not so long ago that we budgeted £20 a day for European car hire, so a week's rental would be at least £140, for the smallest class. Still and all, our experience of Hertz has always been wonderful. They've upgraded us for free on several occasions. And no, Hertz never grumbles about the fact that we carry an annual insurance policy for CDW excess.

Rhinocarhire's scalp of Almeria airport rental prices in May also included those charged by the, um, illustrious Goldcar. Goldcar's price -- admittedly, for a car of a slightly lesser category than the Astra-or-similar we've booked -- was. . . £102 cheaper.

Am-az-ing. Goldcar can do for around a tenner a day that which few, if any, other car hire companies in Spain seem able to manage. Goldcar must have a really, really special way of managing things.

We've still gone with the Hertz quote. Because that way, we're saved the bother of having to come on here, protesting about Goldcar rip-offs, Goldcar thefts, Goldcar lies.

But of course. . . there'll STILL be people who look at a supplier's price and never look at the supplier. As with Goldcar: it's a bargain, right? Grab it.

But perhaps -- with luck -- this year there'll be no more complaints about Goldcar on this forum or any other anywhere else on the Internet, because people will have (a) learnt to use their brains and (b) learnt how to use the Internet to run a search on the supplier BEFORE booking.

Perhaps.

AlexMac

Good post PhylPho but as regards your optimism:

PhylPho wrote: »

...perhaps -- with luck -- this year there'll be no more complaints about Goldcar on this forum or any other anywhere else on the Internet, because people will have

(a) learnt to use their brains and
(b) learnt how to use the Internet to run a search on the supplier BEFORE booking. Perhaps.

We can all hope; but don't hold your breath!

Tripadvisor's many different Country Forums and other websites are awash with hundreds of thousands of complaints for unhappy punters who forgot to check reviews first; 450,000 on Google!

Goldcar even have a dedicated bot called Victoria R (short for Rumside) who responds in an amazingly fluent variety of languages with thousands of emollient PR messages for Goldcar!

Maybe almost half a million whingers are all wrong?

Victoria Rumside even has her own Facebook page- facing away from the camera, perched on a high wall, overlooking a cliff, on a Greek or Spanish costa, next to a shiny (Goldcar?) rental. But sadly, Victoria has no Facebook "friends"?

Less cynically and more helpfully, if you want to avoid mistakes, there is an excellent post on the Tripadvisor forums with advice about car hire; in Spain, but generaly relevant, by a regular contributor called Ceejayblue; #1 at

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g187435-i317-k10395502-Tips_for_Car_Hire-Costa_del_Sol_Province_of_Malaga_Andalucia.html#83951907

Like Phylpho, I always go for reliable, well-reviewed car rental operators, ofthen AVIS or their cheaper brand "Budget", who offer the same cars, usually from the same desk.

If I do use an aggregator or comparison site, my favourite is the UK-based https://www.rentalcars.com Although they do list cowboys like Goldcar, their results clearly indicate the local operator's name (so you can check reviews as Phylpho suggests before booking) and also fuelling policy (I prefer Full-full so you don't get scammed for a full tank).

Through luck or judgement, I've therefore never been scammed in over 50 rentals.

PhylPho

AlexMac wrote: »

Good post PhylPho but as regards your optimism:
We can all hope; but don't hold your breath!

Thanks, AlexMac. Yup, I'm aware of Goldcar's emollient bot -- and aware of the way two brothers set up Goldcar and determined its ethos from the start. That T/A link of yours is also very useful.

What's so saddening about overseas car hire -- and this doesn't relate to Goldcar alone -- is the way so many appear to think what they see on the Internet is what they'll get.

Not for a moment does it occur to them that if someone's offering a free lunch, the cost of the cutlery (alleged damage), table cloth (alleged damage), cover charge (hidden at time of booking) and quality of meal (inedible) will likely give them truly serious financial indigestion at the end of the day.

Goldcar's ten-quid-a-day rental prices are, very obviously, unsustainable. If Goldcar could genuinely afford to rent out at those prices, so would every other operator. Yet does that dawn on Goldcar's customers? Evidently. . . not.

Ah well. Another summer looms. And (because I concur with your realistic outlook) yet more tales by lambs who went to the financial slaughterhouse instead of on holiday, and then bleated about it, afterwards.