Car Hire Considerations

We act as agents for all sorts of Car Hire companies including Hertz, Avis, National, Eurpocar as well as car hire brokers such as Holiday Autos and Cheap-Car-Rental.

Choosing which car hire company depends on a lot of factors and often the determining factor is location or opening hours. The next determining factor for many companies is who do you have an account with. The final factor is who has the most suitable cars. With so much competion there may still be several car hire companies 'still in the frame' so it comes down to price.

It is pretty important not to just choose the cheapest quote as that could be a false economy. To find the cheapest you need to work out what the final bill is going to be. Inclusive rates are likely to appear the most expensive but actually work out the cheapest when the rental is concluded. For example which is cheaper 25 a day all inclusive or 15 per day plus an amount per kilometre, plus CDW, plus insurance, plus theft protection, plus location surcharge, plus tax or VAT etc.. In this example if each km cost 20p and you did not take any other items such as insurance, if you drive more than only 32 kms it is still cheaper to have all inclusive!

Booking through a car hire broker is likely to be cheaper on rentals more than a couple of days but the rentals have to be prepaid. Here again there are differences which you may wish to consider for instance Holiday Autos charge 100% cancellation fee whereas cheap-car-rental charge just one days rental.

It is very important that you consider insurance. It maybe your own insurance will cover driving a hire car but it may only be a limited cover and the car rental company may well require a larger deposit. You should also check the cover provided and consider carefully the options given by the car rental company as an accident, particularly car hire in USA and Canada could be very, very costly.

When collecting your rental car it is important that you inspect it for any damage. The body (including underneath if you can) and the paintwork should be checked but so should tyres, and the interior. You should draw the car rental company's attention to any defects and you should ask them to note it both on your copy of the agreement and theirs. Failure to do this is likely to result in your being charged for damage caused by the previous hirer. We don't want that do we.

Happy motoring!