Holiday Car Hire Sector – more competition needed?

peachyprice

badger66 wrote: »

the only comforting words from Hertz is I should have booked directly with them!

And there you have it.

Time and time again we see people here who have used a broker and have suffered no end of problems. Why do people still do it?

Yes, use a broker to get an idea of price and who is available at your destination, then just go direct.

EveryWhere

badger66 wrote: »

Many thanks for the post by ‘richardw’. Yes, holiday car hire is a minefield – but does it have to be? When spending about £300 (say, buying a small television), I don’t need to go on MSE to check out 34 tips, read through the terms and conditions of the provider and their partners (and have these checked by a solicitor) then go to another company to have the television insured. I appreciate that car hire may be more little more complex than a television but it seems that car hire businesses are happy to exploit this. In a modern economy, is it unreasonable to expect car hire brokers to emphasise, from the outset, that their Super Cover insurance is unlikely to be accepted by the car hire companies, not bury this fact in their T & Cs?

You mentioned that ‘others’ are campaigning for greater clarity from the sector. Could you say who this is, as I would certainly like to support their efforts?

One day, hopefullly an entrepreneur will come along and shake up the car hire sector (so it’s focused on servicing rather than exploiting vunerable customers) just like Easy Jet did in air travel. Maybe the Competition and Markets Authority is already examining the car hire sector, looking at profitability, levels of consumer satisfaction etc.

The fault is yours and yours only.
First of all, you chose to utilise a broker instead of booking directly with the car hirer itself.
Booking direct, your choices would be to take the excess waiver from the car hirer direct, purchase a standalone insurance policy or to self-insure if anything went wrong.
Excess waiver is only available directly from the car hire company.
But you chose to go via a broker. The broker made it clear that you would need to leave a deposit and sold you an insurance policy. You didn't bother to read the details of that insurance policy, otherwise you would have known it was a reimbursement product.

Your other complaint was about the additional driver price. We can be sure that you paid a ridiculously low price for the rental, so complaining that the additional driver price was 50% of the rental is disingenuous at best. Why not quote the actual figures paid?

You are wrong. I made a dummy booking using your criteria and everything was made very clear by Economy Bookings. No rip off at any point. Just your failure to take note of very clear conditions. Learn from your mistakes.

Good luck to you if you allow richardw to lead you up the garden path.

brianposter

peachyprice wrote: »

And there you have it.

Time and time again we see people here who have used a broker and have suffered no end of problems. Why do people still do it?

Yes, use a broker to get an idea of price and who is available at your destination, then just go direct.

Given that almost all car hires are cheaper going through a broker than booking direct, this advice makes no sense.
Online brokers have two advantages - they are generally cheaper and some have UK offices which makes taking them to court easier.
The important advice is that you should investigate the car hire firm whatever way you book.

benjus

badger66 wrote: »

One day, hopefullly an entrepreneur will come along and shake up the car hire sector (so it’s focused on servicing rather than exploiting vunerable customers) just like Easy Jet did in air travel. Maybe the Competition and Markets Authority is already examining the car hire sector, looking at profitability, levels of consumer satisfaction etc.

The reason that zero excess insurance, additional drivers etc. are so expensive is that they are optional extras. The hire companies want to show the minimum possible headline price to compete on comparison sites, so they make the extras as expensive as possible, and often try hard to sell them (although personally I've always found that saying "no thanks" with no hesitation or doubt is perfectly sufficient).

It's a very common technique, and funnily enough it's also very common in low cost airlines, such as EasyJet.