European car hire - anyone else finding the rates a bit daft

[anonymous-user]

[redacted]

[WTFWT]

Apologies if you've already tried it, but I always give holiday autos.com a try. They liaise with all the local companies rather than just Avis, Hertz etc and I find them pretty good.

HTH

[Roo]

Looking at options for a trip to Dordogne next year it was quite a lot cheaper to book the flights and car hire together with BA than try to book the car seperately.

[Roo]

Just looked at holidayautos and they're dearer than Avis.

[CYMR0]

£200 per week is decent for a large car IMO.

www.carrentals.co.uk is a very good search engine for car hire deals - the best they can do (from 15/9 to 29/9) is £338 for an intermediate, £377 for a standard and £463 for a fullsize (probably automatic).

[WeirdNeville]

Found it pretty reasonable in Italy last month: £230 for a 5dr Fiesta for 12 days.

Beware the excess though. I had to drive like a saint as the €1,800 excess waiver was €280 over the hire period. Didn't pay obviously.
Had I known I would have bought on of the excess insuarance policies before travelling for £50 for the year.

[MissChief]

I've used carhire3000.com which recently changed to rentalcars.com to hire within the UK half a dozen times and they've always proved cheaper than going direct, even with the same company that the hire is from.

[Lordbenny]

Another vote for car hire 3000 here, best prices in Europe....I should know!

[Chrisw666]

Last year (August) we hired a focus in Italy and it cost us £156 for 2 weeks with Hertz.

This year I was quoted £450 for 2 weeks in France and £400 for the same in Italy and that was Fiesta sized cars. None of the companies seemed to have sensible prices so I'm driving and including petrol am saving a decent chunk.

[treetops]

Some of the big companies cannot finance additional cars to expand their fleet. Therefore they have to squeeze every cent they can out of what they have. What would you lend to a Spanish car hire arm of a business?? Or indeed a French one?

[Deva Link]

Hunt around for a Hertz CDP code - perhaps with one of your credit card companies, or hotel or airline loyalty cards.

Or Google for one, but I'm not sure how dodgy it is to use a random code. CDP 591064 for Amex Centurion reduces the rate by 20% but I don't know if that would fall over if you used a different card to book it etc.

[VxDuncan]

I think in general the rental companies have reduced their exposure to downturns in the market and reduced fleet sizes and kept vehicles for longer. This has probably had an impact in prices - I remember a couple of summers ago the wasn't a single car available in Spain for hire (slight exaggeration!).

One tip I would say is err on the late side of the collection time. If your flights are late arriving some companies will sting you with a big bill if you're late collecting (happened to me with Avis I think - though it may have been due to a post midnight collection).