RAC? Rent a Car, do you guys rent vehicles?

[Fabia130vRS 2098]

I am planning a trip this summer, and would like to rent a car as I find it convenient to roam around,

 

Do you guys rent cars? If so what brand do you trust/use the most?  Big company's like Sixt, Hertz, Avis, Enterprise better to go to or avoid?

I have heard about different insurance levels and some cross border thing, it all adds up, do all the companies charge those?

 

Also so many price differences between official websites and for example booking.com, expidia, rentalcars are very different, is it better to book now or rent at location?

 

What are your expiriences? any funny side stories? 

 

[Frog Jumper 3658]

Dollar, Hertz, and Avis are all good.  Enterprise is most expensive.

I haven't had to rent a car in several years though...

Terry

 

[sosidge 624]

I haven't rented for ages. But booking in advance was always a big discount. And read the terms and conditions about insurance and fuelling, especially if your are thinking of going cross border. They love to add extra charges when you drop the car off. Collision damage waivers can be good value.

The big firms tend to have modern cars. Smaller independents might have something much older.

[Mad Ax 9312]

Where are you travelling?  The big players probably have outlets in all the major cities worldwide and may not be the cheapest but generally give a more consistent level of service and product for what you pay, in my limited experience.

Generally my routine is to book a car in advance with a pickup at the airport that I'm travelling to.  I've done this both within the UK and without.  Generally the big players have their car depots actually at the airport, often the desk is right in the arrivals area and someone will take you to your car as soon as the paperwork is handled.  The smaller independents might say "pick up at airport" but what that means is a gang of kids picks you up in an ageing minibus and drives you 15 minutes into the industrial wilderness where you can't be entirely sure if you're going to pick up a hire car or have all your bags and money stolen.  In fairness the latter has never happened to me, but we got picked up at Malaga Airport around 10 years ago and, being tired and disorientated from travelling, it was a bit disconcerting being driven around some dark, deserted lanes by a group of kids who didn't look old enough to be behind the wheel.

I've got a few other anecdotes, which come with words of warning:

The Insurance Waiver Anecdote

A few years back we travelled to Portugal where we'd rented a "small car".  Turns out they gave us a WV Up, which wouldn't be my first choice of car, but was a great little runabout for the week.  On collection, I was asked to insert my credit card in order to pay the damage excess up-front.  This is something most car hire companies in the UK and EU will do if you don't take out their own insurance - they will attempt to pre-auth your card for whatever the insurance excess value is (I think it was around €1000).  As it happened, I didn't have a credit card - I had a lot of trouble with credit card debt when I was younger, so I cut my cards up.  Well, they wouldn't let me take the car away without buying their own full insurance package - which was around €150, I think.  That was almost as much as the car cost for a week, but actually, once I'd paid it, I felt a lot better - there was absolutely no excess to pay, I didn't even have to have the car inspected when I got back.  The clerk told me I could literally drop it off, put the keys in the box and walk away, it didn't matter if it was a total wreck.

The problem with rental damage policies is they usually have a really high damage excess to start with, and it doesn't matter whose fault it is - if somebody dings the door in a car park, you're liable for the damage.  That said, I have never ever had a hire company try to claim against me, but it certainly adds to the stress of driving and parking in a place you're not familiar with.  These days I tend to arrange a separate car hire insurance policy before I go - it's way cheaper than the hire company's own policy and has a low excess.

The Multi-tier Society Anecdote

One time we flew to Scotland.  I'd hired a compact family car.  Once again, I went with an independent, and we had to get in a rattly old bus to go to some industrial district on the outskirts of Edinburgh to fetch our jalopy.  Which, as it turned out, was a brand-spanking-new Peugeot 308 in black, with 18 inch alloys, leather bucket seats, tiny sports steering wheel, satnav and all the toys.  When I was doing the paperwork, I was asked what level of insurance I wanted.  I was confused, so I asked them to explain.

There were five - yes, 5 - levels of insurance available.  The basic poverty-spec insurance which was included with the car had a £2000 damage excess.  That meant, if the car got damaged or written off, I was liable for the first £2000, even if it wasn't my fault (one would assume, if it wasn't my fault, I could claim that £2000 back from the other party, but that could take a while).  Furthermore, if the car was damaged or written off, my hire period was over - there would be no replacement car.  In fact, even if it broke down, I still had to arrange recovery and get it back to the depot at my own cost, and wouldn't get a replacement car.  I think I had to go to like level 3 or something to even be sure of having a car until the end of the hire period.  On the absolute top-level insurance policy, I was told I could literally drive the car down the road, turn it upside down, call the depot and they would have a replacement to me within the hour, and have no excess to pay at all.  However the cost for that policy was almost as much as the damage excess on the basic policy.

I told them I just wanted the basic one, then had a moment of utter panic when I couldn't remember the PIN for my credit card.  Fortunately I guessed right on the very last try, otherwise we'd have been walking from Edinburgh to Braemar (for the record, it was November, and it's a 2.5 hour drive).

The car was an interesting one, too.  I'm not really a Peugeot fan, having been let down by several in the past, but I do like how the 2nd gen 308 looks, especially in black.  It kept telling me to change up a gear at like 1500rpm, so I assumed it was some kind of fancy modern fuel-efficient motor that had some low-down torque but wouldn't rev.  Well, one time I left the wife and child at the apartment and went out to pick some stuff up, and coming up the hill out of Ballater I put my foot to the floor and ignored the Change Up warning.  Turns out it was the 1.6 turbo model.  It was no slouch  

The Cyber Cafe Anecdote

Around 15 years ago, my parents hired an apartment in Marbella for a fortnight, and invited me to join them for a few days.  They said I wouldn't need a car, as they would pick me up from the airport and do all the driving.  But after a few days I got bored, so I went to the nearest big brand car hire desk and enquired about a compact car for 3 days.  It came in pretty expensive, and I was a bit disappointed, but the clerk told me to go check online.  Back in the good old days that meant finding somewhere with a half-decent internet connection, so I went and found a cyber cafe.  I booked the hire online for around €100 less than it would have cost at the desk.

The Infrequent Driver Anecdote

This one comes from our first ever all-inclusive Family Life holiday.  After we were all booked and sorted, I said to the wife "what about a car?"

"Well, do you want one?" She asked.  "There's a coach that picks up from the airport as part of the holiday."

"Yeah, but we'll want to go out and explore, right..?" I said.  So I went online and ordered a hire car (after previous issues with long minibus rides in dark places, I went with one of the major names).  We had an 18-month old, so of course, we needed a baby seat.  But we also needed a buggy (or stroller, if you prefer).  And the buggy we used also doubled as an Isofix car seat, if you used the optional base.  But that was oversized luggage, so we had to pay extra for that, too.  Then, when we arrived at the airport, the oversized luggage desk was closed.  We hung around forever, and ever, and ever, until we were at risk of missing our flight, before someone finally came and checked in our bags.  Then we had to rush to the plane.

When we arrived on Minorca, the oversized luggage desk was, again, closed.  It took an age to find a travel rep who understood what oversized luggage was, and then took another 40-50 minutes of hanging around waiting for phone calls before we were finally told that our child seat had missed the flight and was, in fact, at that precise moment, lost.  Which was something of a problem because we were due to arrive back in Bristol a little over a week later, at stupid o'clock in the morning, and had over an hour to drive to get home, and no baby seat.

So, off we went to the car hire desk, signed for our car and paid the additional €50 for a baby seat.  If only they hired buggies too (or strollers, if you prefer.  Although hiring out buggies sounds like fun), as we weren't looking forward to a week of having to carry our daughter (who at that point still hadn't got the hang of walking).

So, we get ourselves comfortable in our nice Ford Fusion and set off for the resort.  Which, it turned out, was about 10 minutes drive away.  I went to the desk to check in, and was met with complete confusion.  Apparently, people arriving by car at a Family Life resort is almost unheard of, and it took them a while to realise that I was part of the coach party who had arrived half an hour ago, which was incidentally an hour late because they were looking for a family of 3 who had mysteriously disembarked the plane and not made it to the coach depot.

Ah...  Yes, it seems that neither my wife nor I had realised they would be checking names off on a list before the coach left the airport, to make sure no holidaymakers were left behind.  But because we were still busy monopolising a rep inside the arrivals hall trying to work out where our luggage was, the coach-checking rep hadn't been able to locate us, and it took a long time for the message to get around that we wouldn't be joining the coach party after all.

The following day I get a call from the rep to say our luggage had been found, and was at the airport waiting.  They offered to sent a taxi, but since the airport was only 10 minutes away and I had a perfectly good car to drive, I said I'd go fetch it.  It probably took longer to walk to the car than it did to drive the airport, and certainly took longer to hang around at the luggage collection desk to sign for the baggage and make sure everything was accounted for.  Oh, and to return the €50 euro hire seat that we no longer needed.

A couple of days later we decided to visit a local zoo, which was, again, around 15 minutes away.  If that.  And the resort offered a coach trip there, for free.  But we did stop at a pharmacy on the way back, because my wife had a sore throat.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the sum total mileage for the entire holiday.  Airport -> resort -> airport -> resort -> zoo -> pharmacy -> resort -> airport.  I'm not even sure we used a quarter of a tank of fuel.  We could have used taxis for every one of those journeys and still paid less than half what the hire car cost.

The moral to this story is: before spending a fortune on a hire car, check if you will actually use it when you get there.  And if you've got a coach transfer included, remember to inform the reps before you travel so they don't hold up 20 other exhausted young families because they're looking for someone who is already half-way there under their own steam.

In Summary

Check the details when you book - a cheaper independent company might charge way more for the damage waiver, or have much a higher damage excess, than a big brand name

You will probably need a credit card with a high limit, and you will have to pre-authorise it with your PIN, before you can drive the car away

Shop around for insurance, don't assume the rental company will have the best deal

Never pay extra for satnav, most of the cars I've hired in the last 8 years have had built-in satnav anyway

Add up the total cost of car hire and determine if you'll really use it.  Depending on where you're staying, it might be better to hire a car only for part of your stay to do those away trips you wanted to do

[SlideWRX 785]

Haven't rented in a couple years because I haven't traveled for work with covid. I mostly used Hertz without issue.  About 4-5 years ago I rented a Minivan to take the family cross-country (Michigan to Texas/New Mexico).  I haven't had any major issues with the big rental companies.

Funny story - One of the last trips I was renting out of Las Vegas right after some major convention took over town.  They were low on vehicles, so they 'upgraded' me to a pickup.  "Everyone loves the pickups" the lady at the counter said.  Turns out it was a Heavy Duty 2500 pickup.  The step in height was around my thigh, and I'm 5ft 10inches (1.8ish meters?).  I had to pull myself up into this thing.  At the time I was laughing at it and amused, so I took it.  I wasn't worried about gas - this was on the companies bill.  I did end up carpooling with someone else from work on the same trip, instead of using the pickup all the time, as getting in/out was a pain in the butt.  I parked it hard against a curb in the parking lot just to get the extra step height to get in/out...

[Elbowloh 1128]

I've rented cars  in Malaysia (on Langkawi, pretty sure it was an employee of the hotel's car), Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Austria (cross to Switzerland via Lichtenstein), Estonia, France, Italy Ireland, Scotland...well lots of places.  It often costs quite a but more if you want to drop off a car at a different place to where you picked up (we've done that  in Australia (Perth to Esperance) and Canada (Picked up Victoria, drove all round Vancouver Island and dropped off in Vancouver). Within the EU, you can generally cross borders no problem and there is no extra charge for this (check the specifics of your rental agreement however).

Tops things I've learned:

1) take photos of the car when you pick it up, particularly any areas of damage and again when you drop it off.

2) Properly inspect the car at pick/up drop off and record the damage on the form they give you

3) generally if you want extra insurance, its way cheaper to buy it from a third party online before you go, as Mad Ax says.

4) If they try to tell you that you damaged  the car, have your photos ready and demand to see copies of the inspection they did before the car was given to you and the one when they received it

5) most definitely return it with a full tank if that's what the deal is, they will charge you a higher rate per litre and a fee for filling up (some other deals include a full tank of gas in the rental however, so if you return it with petrol, you're literally giving them your money).

 

Every time has been one of the big boys, apart from in Scotland (Glasgow), which was very much like Mad Ax's Edinburgh story, long wait for a minivan to take me offsite to a dusty gravel-tracked lot, but the car and service was actually very good).

[Tamiyastef 1966]

Good idea to check the terms of your credit card. Sometimes when you pay for the rental car with your credit card it is insured automatically (for example with VISA Gold) There's no need to pay for insurance twice  

[Thommo 1217]

13 minutes ago, Tamiyastef said:

Good idea to check the terms of your credit card. Sometimes when you pay for the rental car with your credit card it is insured automatically (for example with VISA Gold) There's no need to pay for insurance twice  

 

Agree but check very carefully because often the collision waiver is NOT insurance and often the credit card company will only pay your waiver if you have agreed to the waiver and paid to reduce liability.  The credit card company will not accept maximum liability for you ever !

 

[markbt73 5316]

I've rented a lot of cars over the years, mostly in the US, but also Germany, England, Ireland, Barbados, and Curacao. I usually end up with Dollar because they're often the cheapest, but in Ireland we rented from Sixt. (And they asked me three times if I could drive a manual, and whether I might be more comfortable in an automatic. I told them my daily driver was a manual, and yes, some of us Americans still know how to do it.)

A walk-around is important before you leave, and if it's a self-serve arrangement ("go pick whatever car you want from row B"), take some photos of the car, especially any obvious damage. The time-stamp on the photo should convince them the damage was pre-existing, if there is any question.

(Funny anecdote about rental car equipment: we rented a Toyota Hilux pickup on the island of Curacao, and it had an aftermarket alarm that kept going off whenever we hit a bump. We called the rental company, and they told us to open the hood, find the fuse, and pull it. Island life, mon...)

[GoFast80 14]

This is an old(er) thread but if anyone is interested I've found major airports off season have the best rates and easiest convenience if you can. 24 hour availability and you don't have to worry about the 12 noon open and close scam. Always a great variety also.   Do the pre- check online and they just point you to a bunch of cars with the keys already inside. Nobody with a tablet standing over you.  Just have to Uber there and back.