Car Hire At Alicante Airport

Certainly not Goldcar or their agents Rental cars, just do a forum search. Personally I go for the majors such as Avis etc, bit more expensive but you're unlikely, but not impossible, to be ripped off.

Raymondo111 wrote: »

I agree that the big Companies are not always the cheapest but you get what you pay for.

An overpriced hire car?

At ALC Goldcar's office is in the middle of the concourse and their long queues are a pain in the neck, agitating those in the queue and blocking the thoroughfares.
Their car park is in the dark basement of the multi storey car park, making pre and post car inspections difficult.
Avis, Budget, Enterprise are very competitive without the too cheap hassles.

TBH i have only rented a car once whilst abroad and it happens to be from Alicante Airport. So my experience is limited but non the less i have experience.....

I chose to go through Rental Cars.com and eventually hired a Vauxhall Corsa from FireFly (part of the Hertz group) for 7 days and even though they had the typical good/bad reviews like the rest of the budget hire car companies, overall my experience was excellent and my dealings with the staff at Firefly was pleasant enough that i would choose them again if they were the cheapest.

In my honest opinion i see all Hire Car companies as the same - their all fighting for your custom and if they see an opportunity then they will hard sell their worthless insurance coverage and their over priced fuel policies to those who have not come prepared!

So my advise is that do your homework and turn up prepared with paperwork confirming the hire car contract and additional insurances and it doesn't matter who you go with, they all use the same types of cars from the same car park!

Raymondo111 wrote: »

By going with the more well known rental companies you at least get options on their fuel policy, having been scammed previously on paying for a full tank and not using it and no refund I now go with the bigger companies and do full/full. At Alicante there is a petrol station about a mile from the airport when coming from the south I fill up there to make sure I don't get re-fuelling charges plus rip off fuel cost.:D

Im sorry but i could not disagree with you more on your comment, all hire car companies offer a range of fuel policies on their quotes so it is up to you as the customer to ensure that you are getting what you pay for!
Most search engines even allow you to search for hire cars that only come with a full-full fuel policy, so unfortunately you did not stick to the golden rule which is do your homework, thats how you got scammed!

As for the re-fueling at the fuel station 1 mile from the airport, isn't it funny how while i was in Alicante - they happened to be the most expensive fuel station, so much for dodging the rip off fuel costs eh.......

richardw wrote:

At ALC Goldcar's office is in the middle of the concourse and their long queues are a pain in the neck, agitating those in the queue and blocking the thoroughfares.
Their car park is in the dark basement of the multi storey car park, making pre and post car inspections difficult.
Avis, Budget, Enterprise are very competitive without the too cheap hassles.

All the Hire Car companies use the same concourse as Gold Car which is in the main Terminal, and a week before i visited Alicante i was told by a family member that Fire Fly always have long queues, but yet when we arrived i was number 4 in the queue, funny enough Gold Car didn't look too busy either, But yet Budget had a queue about 50 meters long! So its the luck of the draw on the day as too how long you wait to be seen too.
All the Hire Car companies use the same dark basement multi-storey car park in Alicante, including Avis, Budget and Enterprise

Anyway i hope this has helped the OP, and remember do your homework and you will do just fine.

Regards.

he there we (nearly always) use Centauro hire car at Alicante airport. They are offsite but only 5 minutes in a minibus and easy to find on the way back. It will work out much quicker than on-airport pick-up. We usually rent via DoYouSpain which works out cheaper and organise our own excess policy beforehand as mentioned above. We've never encountered hardsell and find them very helpful and not at all pushy.
We have used Solmar in the past but they always seem very expensive nowadays.
The only problem we have is because we stay north of Alicante there is not an easy to reach petrol station for topping up as we always go full-full