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Car Hire

Freddie1980

Freddie1980

Freddie1980

Soldato
Joined
25 Sep 2009
Posts
10,552
Location
Billericay, UK
Does anyone here have any experience with car hire abroad?

I've e booked a trip to Malta in November and I'm looking to hire a car and I've noticed there's a big price difference between the established names (Hertz, Europcar, Enterprise etc) and other local/smaller companies.

With the cheaper hires they do require a large deposit of 1400ish Euros but the hire rate is about a third of what the big companies are charging. If I go with one these cheap hire companies am I going to get fleeced when I hand it back with phoney made up charges so I lose my deposit?
 
Big names can be silly cheap but I've had good success with local independent companies too.

Whatever you do, external excess protection will probably be cheaper, insurance4carhire for example.
 
I think you're much more likely to get a crap car if you go for the local providers but if you just want the cheapest they are probably fine if you have excess protection. Be wary of mandatory fuel tank purchases and the like.
I always just go with sixt or hertz. Rental prices seem to have come back down to earth again now.
 
Often the business model of the local companies is to get you in with a low rate and extract money from you later by claiming for damage that already existed. That's not always the case though - for example in Iceland the local companies are more reputable that the international brands. If you want to use a local company, the Tripadvisor forum or Reddit is usually a good place to check what they're like.
 
On Holiday said:
Whatever you do, external excess protection will probably be cheaper, insurance4carhire for example.
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Agree with this. After my recent experience I’d never consider going without a stand-alone excess protection policy. It also gives you confidence when they are trying to upsell you. I used cover4rentals
 
I usually look on MoneySavingExpert and use one of the hire excess insurance companies linked from there. I paid about £18 for a week's cover in France in June - that was with EverSure (via MSE). Pretty much any add-ons offered by the hire company like excess insurance or them filling up the tank on return is to make big profits for the hire company. Do your homework on Google Maps to find the petrol station nearest the rental office so you can return full (keep the receipt for the fuel as well).

The other thing to do is to take lots of photos of every part of the car when you collect and return (including the wheels, roof etc). You'll probably want to get the aircon on and get going but find any existing damage marked on the hire doc's and look for anything unmarked.
 
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This is really useful stuff. I'm looking to hire a car here in the UK in October and the excess pricing was ridiculous, sometimes more than the cost to hire the car! Insurance via insurance4carhire looks to be just £32.99! Amazing. Will check out some via MoneySavingExpert and EverSure as mentioned too. Thanks!
 
Just to say I went via RAC in the end. £33.15 originally but added on key cover and car contents cover (as I'll have some guitar gear in the car). Came to £49 for the cover. Amazing.
 
I usually hire with Hertz but in Iceland, we used small local companies and had excellent service. I've never once had trouble with damage on a vehicle but I always get independent excess cover. This year I am using insurance4carhire.

Some car hire companies are renowned for charging for minor things. Green Motion have such a bad reputation that some car hire excess companies exclude covering them.

Blog - Pros & Cons Of Green Motion Car Hire | Blog

Green Motion car rental has caused a stir amongst their customers. Overcharging customers hundreds of pounds for pre-existing damage on their vehicles.
www.bettersafe.com www.bettersafe.com
 
I use an app called Qeeq for no reason other than I found it a few years ago.

Usually just go with the cheapest on there and have never had any dramas, including when I took a car back with no fuel in Marseille after it had been given to me full, they didn't care or charge me anything :cry:

Went to three fuel stations near the hire place but they were only for "members" or something like that, what a silly country :p

As others have said, I take photos and do a full video walk around of the inside and outside of the car with the member of staff when they hand it over, then do the same when I drop it off, not sure if this stops any chance of shenanigans but i've never had an issue!
 
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Always take comprehensive photos of the car on collection and return as well as the above advice regarding external excess cover would be my advice, esp in Europe.
I have unfortunately had them try and fleece me on pre-existing damage, even after challenging them on collection that it wasnt documented and having the photos served me very well.
These days most of my car hires are in the US and I never have any problems there and I almost always use Avis as they seem to be cheapest for me, I dont even bother with the excess cover as the excess on the policy always seems to be 0...spouses also dont need to be added as additional drivers (for me at least)...worth reading the fine print.
 
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We ended up not hiring a car in Malta and just used taxis (download the Bolt app). It's such a small island that no taxi ride was more than about €15. Total came in at about €120 over the week including airport transfers so that was way less than car hire.
 
For general peace of mind I normally only use Hertz or Enterprise when travelling and have an account with both but when we went to Malta some years ago I tried a local firm, JS Car Hire and had a great experience with them.

I've just checked their Google reviews and they currently score 5 with nearly 700 reviews so they seem to be clearly still doing things well.

I'm not sure how their current prices compare but they are worth checking out.
 
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