Car hire - worrying price discrepancy
Discussion
I'm planning on visiting the UK for 3 weeks next year.
I'll need a hire car so have been looking at costs. Has to be AT because the OH can't drive MT.
AVIS Aus site allows me to book (but not pay for) a Merc C Class for 20 days for an "estimated" total of 931 GBP (including child seat and all the insurance stuff).
AVIS UK site is giving me exactly the same hire for 2,409 GBP
if I pay now (actually I suspect that doesn't include excess reduction)
What am I missing? Am I running the risk of booking it through the Aus site and then turning up to collect it only to find out I'm going to be bent over the hire desk and smashed for another 1,500 quid??!!
Weirdly a Ford Galaxy comes in at 1k GBP on the UK site and 1.2k GBP on the Aus site, so cheaper than a C Class in the UK and more than a C Class if booked from Aus.
I'll need a hire car so have been looking at costs. Has to be AT because the OH can't drive MT.
AVIS Aus site allows me to book (but not pay for) a Merc C Class for 20 days for an "estimated" total of 931 GBP (including child seat and all the insurance stuff).
AVIS UK site is giving me exactly the same hire for 2,409 GBP
if I pay now (actually I suspect that doesn't include excess reduction)What am I missing? Am I running the risk of booking it through the Aus site and then turning up to collect it only to find out I'm going to be bent over the hire desk and smashed for another 1,500 quid??!!
Weirdly a Ford Galaxy comes in at 1k GBP on the UK site and 1.2k GBP on the Aus site, so cheaper than a C Class in the UK and more than a C Class if booked from Aus.
Orchid1 said:
Does it have to be a C Class? Why not an Automatic Ford Focus or something?
The auto choices from AVIS appear to be A Class (too small), C4 Picasso, C class, E class, and Galaxy (too big).On the Aus site the C class is 100 quid more than the Picasso hence I thought I'd go for that. On the UK site the Picasso is about 2 grand!
Have a look at https://www.skyscanner.net/carhire and see if you can get a better deal and maybe also buy some car hire excess insurance from a separate company, it might work out a lot cheaper.
Also - check out your airline, they might allow child seats to be carried free in the hold. If your car hire company is charging extra, bringing your own works out cheaper than paying over the odds for hiring some smashed up old seats with somebody elses' kids sticky dribble on.
We took two booster seats on our last trip, saved around 70 Euros for a week away, you could buy two brand new for half the amount.
We took two booster seats on our last trip, saved around 70 Euros for a week away, you could buy two brand new for half the amount.
Thanks for the suggestions.
I'll have a look at skyscanner today.
Hadn't thought about taking a seat (we do that if we travel domestically here) although that might get complicated because Australia has only just introduced isofix and the rules on seats are different too. I'll have a look though.
I'll have a look at skyscanner today.
Hadn't thought about taking a seat (we do that if we travel domestically here) although that might get complicated because Australia has only just introduced isofix and the rules on seats are different too. I'll have a look though.
The US based price is lower than the UK price because it assumes you will have your own insurance. It's one to look out for as a person from the US because you may not have a car and as a result you will be under insured.
Not sure if it still works but, book any small car and select auto. They have to give you an auto for the same price if they don't have the car you selected. We've seen Mercs, volvos and passatsall from Avis for the price of a Fiesta.
Not sure if it still works but, book any small car and select auto. They have to give you an auto for the same price if they don't have the car you selected. We've seen Mercs, volvos and passatsall from Avis for the price of a Fiesta.
The difference in Avis prices could be because they give different deals for non-UK residents; that's certainly the case for the US, where non-residents get CDW & ALI included in the price whereas Americans don't. The UK website doesn't ask for your country of residence so you're effectively booking as a UK resident.
You'll more than likely find that the rates you are getting on the Australian site are actually Source US rates that exclude insurance.. The big clue is the fact they are postpay and not prepay rates.
It happens a lot in the Australian market unfortunately.. I'd ignore them and just use a European based search engine.
It happens a lot in the Australian market unfortunately.. I'd ignore them and just use a European based search engine.
Jader1973 said:
Thanks for the suggestions.
I'll have a look at skyscanner today.
Hadn't thought about taking a seat (we do that if we travel domestically here) although that might get complicated because Australia has only just introduced isofix and the rules on seats are different too. I'll have a look though.
We were lucky this time that our kids are big enough to just have the bottom booster seats which aren't isofix related, so are quite easy to strap two we have already together for the flight.I'll have a look at skyscanner today.
Hadn't thought about taking a seat (we do that if we travel domestically here) although that might get complicated because Australia has only just introduced isofix and the rules on seats are different too. I'll have a look though.
One thing I was thinking of was driving to an equivalent of Halfords and buying a cheap seat for the holiday. Some logistics to work around, which would mean more complicated than just renting the thing from the hire co.
EDIT - just realised you are visiting the UK, I would imagine that any seat from Australia will fit a UK car by attaching as normal to the rear seatbelts (which is what non-isofix seats do, and most isofix seats do as a backup as well, isofix is not compulsory here!).
Edited by prand on Friday 21st October 10:26
h0b0 said:
The US based price is lower than the UK price because it assumes you will have your own insurance. It's one to look out for as a person from the US because you may not have a car and as a result you will be under insured.
Not sure if it still works but, book any small car and select auto. They have to give you an auto for the same price if they don't have the car you selected. We've seen Mercs, volvos and passatsall from Avis for the price of a Fiesta.
Tried this. They found an automatic Fiesta....Not sure if it still works but, book any small car and select auto. They have to give you an auto for the same price if they don't have the car you selected. We've seen Mercs, volvos and passatsall from Avis for the price of a Fiesta.
If it's any consolation (it's certainly no help!) I hired a car in Oz from the UK and they practically doubled the rental cost at the desk at Adelaide airport. Extra premium for picking up at airport (which I had to do because the Adelaide centre pickup place apparently doesn't provide GPS units); 'leaving the state' fee; unlimited miles actually meant 500 miles in total; not insured for driving between dusk and dawn; not insured on 'rural roads' which, when pressed, meant 'roads without streetlights'; and a GPS that tried to take me the wrong way up one-way streets in Melbourne. I complained bitterly at the time and got most of the extra fees waived, and complained some more when I got back and got some further cash off. By comparison, renting in the UK is wonderfully straight-forward - "this is how much it costs".
bigandclever said:
If it's any consolation (it's certainly no help!) I hired a car in Oz from the UK and they practically doubled the rental cost at the desk at Adelaide airport. Extra premium for picking up at airport (which I had to do because the Adelaide centre pickup place apparently doesn't provide GPS units); 'leaving the state' fee; unlimited miles actually meant 500 miles in total; not insured for driving between dusk and dawn; not insured on 'rural roads' which, when pressed, meant 'roads without streetlights'; and a GPS that tried to take me the wrong way up one-way streets in Melbourne. I complained bitterly at the time and got most of the extra fees waived, and complained some more when I got back and got some further cash off. By comparison, renting in the UK is wonderfully straight-forward - "this is how much it costs".
Funnily enough I find renting a car here dead easy 
(although I've never tried taking one interstate).I've done a bit more looking and I think the difference is down to the "extras" you have to buy from the local hire company e.g. insurance.
For example Hertz will let me pay the base hire fee now but additional driver, child seat, insurance etc have to be paid on collection. Adding their insurance almost doubles the cost so I'm going to investigate getting my own or if my travel insurance covers it.
ETA: just found a Telegraph article which says AVIS are aware that customers who book a car from overseas aren't notified of the local insurance costs if they book online and are working on a fix. The article was 2 years old!!
Edited by Jader1973 on Saturday 22 October 00:15
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