Car rental prices through the roof!

[Mark V GTD]

Just got a quote for days rental next week from a local place (part of a big national car rental chain): £100 a day for a Ford Focus manual or £117 for a auto gearbox Corsa!!! Tried other days/dates to see if these were one off prices but they are not.

Last time I rented was for 11 days in summer of 202 - that worked out just over £28 a day.

Really shocked about this - I expected perhaps £50 a day tops but these prices just remove car rental as an option for me.

[Ian974]

I've just had a van for the weekend through enterprise and while it's been a little more than it has been previously, it was still something like £60 a day and I'm sure smaller cars were available for less. I've no idea if these things vary much with location?

[pits]

I would imagine that rental companies have a considerable amount of stock financed, and with nobody really travelling or renting cars they're still paying for it all and need to recoup the losses they are suffering, sadly I doubt the prices will fall back down.

[normalbloke]

Noth8ng new. Been widely reported on, and discussed on here over the last 12-18 months.

[sjg]

A few years ago the hire companies had loads of excess inventory cars from the manufacturers - so they'd cheaply have cars for 6 months which went back into the "approved used" pool. Always more Fiestas, Corsas, Focus, Astras being made than there were brand new buyers so it kept everyone happy.

Then covid happened, no-one needed to rent cars for a while and much of what they had went back on time as agreed. When it picked back up again, shortages meant no deals to be done for cheap cars (so costs are higher), assuming they can even get their hands on cars to rent out. Cheap simple models got much more expensive with fleet average CO2 fines. Added to the mix lots of people WFH and households going from two cars to one, on the assumption they can just hire something when they need it, so demand is up.

We used to have one car and I'd just rent if I was away for the weekend - normally around £20/day. Bought an MPV when family came over for a holiday in 2019 and we kept it because it costs less to run each year than a few weekends of car hire at today's prices.

[mmm-five]

Current rates at my local Enterprise (which are about 3x the price I paid last time I needed one) - and the same car can be had for about 10% cheaper if you go via Costco...

Daily


Weekly

Edited by mmm-five on Monday 31st January 15:47

[CraigyMc]

Mark V GTD said:

Really shocked about this - I expected perhaps £50 a day tops but these prices just remove car rental as an option for me.

It's been like this for months. Several threads on it.

[Mark V GTD]

normalbloke said:

Nothing new. Been widely reported on, and discussed on here over the last 12-18 months.

Sorry - I must have missed that! I try to keep up but there are a lot of threads here on PH and its hard to stay ahead of all the news. Sorry for that:-)

Edited by Mark V GTD on Monday 31st January 18:19

[Shnozz]

CraigyMc said:

Mark V GTD said:

Really shocked about this - I expected perhaps £50 a day tops but these prices just remove car rental as an option for me.

It's been like this for months. Several threads on it.

And a worldwide thing too.

[Mark V GTD]

Shnozz said:

And a worldwide thing too.

Indeed - I had spotted and read the holiday car hire threads but I had not appreciated its gone this crazy here in UK too. I shall be purchasing an interim car for the few months between end of lease and new car arrival. Thanks for all the responses and apologies once again to those posters who had to read yet another thread on the same subject.

[normalbloke]

Mark V GTD said:

normalbloke said:

Nothing new. Been widely reported on, and discussed on here over the last 12-18 months.

Sorry - I must have missed that! I try to keep up but there are a lot of threads here on PH and its hard to stay ahead of all the news. Sorry for that:-)

Edited by Mark V GTD on Monday 31st January 18:19

Don’t apologise, good luck with your purchase going forward, it’s certainly some strange times with regards to planning ahead on the car side of things, given daft waiting times and robust second hand prices.

[Mark V GTD]

Thanks Normalbloke (user name checks out as they say here) :-)

[ddom]

Quick check. Prices the same.

[Shnozz]

Mark V GTD said:

Shnozz said:

And a worldwide thing too.

Indeed - I had spotted and read the holiday car hire threads but I had not appreciated its gone this crazy here in UK too. I shall be purchasing an interim car for the few months between end of lease and new car arrival. Thanks for all the responses and apologies once again to those posters who had to read yet another thread on the same subject.

I think until you come to book a hire car it probably isn’t widely noticed. Wouldn’t worry.

And with regards to holidays, I think covid has sheltered a huge amount of brexit fallout people will also wake up to when travel becomes commonplace again. But that’s for another thread…

[Mark V GTD]

Yes its certainly made me re-think my plans. I wonder what the customer retention level is for companies such as the above mentioned here who have put in three to four fold price hikes in the last 18 months?

[Shnozz]

Mark V GTD said:

Yes its certainly made me re-think my plans. I wonder what the customer retention level is for companies such as the above mentioned here who have put in three to four fold price hikes in the last 18 months?

It’s just the market dictating the rates. No supply of new cars due to chip shortage and no renewal of end of fleet life cars during covid due to lack of demand. The hire companies probably at least stemmed the losses by disposal of any cars at bonkers second hand prices as dealers struggled for stock.

I cannot see it changing anytime soon. Try hiring a van at any price right now. Almost impossible.

[Earthdweller]

Yup

I’m back in Manchester/North West this weekend .. I can get reasonably cheap flights but when I added the cost of a basic hire car ( Kia Rio ) for three days it was cheaper to drive back to the U.K. and get the ferry across

Edited by Earthdweller on Monday 7th February 16:45

Edited by Earthdweller on Monday 7th February 16:47

[Mrtank]

This is out of order. Try rentalcars. This is how it works, majority of booking slots are presold to rentalcars nowdays. It's cheaper too. Found golf for £106 total for your dates.

[EVO575]

On seeing this thread , I have just rented a Peugeot 208 for 18 days in July (collect and leave back to Nice Airport) with Europcar through Rental Cars for £636 which I thought was OK.

[vikingaero]

We've got a new independent car/van rental place in town. Most places used to rent a Transit/Transporter/Ducato van for £85 (£70+£15 zero excess). This new place wanted £120. I checked their competitors and prices were similar.

Also it was a slow day at work and I checked our hire car policy with Enterprise - c. £21.00 for a C1/Aygo/Up, c. £24 for a Corsa/Fiesta, £27 for a Focus/Astra which all seemed very reasonable.