Car hire in Mallorca

[MyNameIsUrl]

I’m a car-hire novice, worried that I’ll be fleeced when picking up or dropping off a car at the airport.

I’ve looked on comparison websites - are the big names safer or is a cheaper local firm likely to be more trustworthy?

Assuming I pay the extra for “Excess Insurance”, does this mean I can stop worrying about any scrapes I get, or fail to identify on collection? I know I can get standalone cover cheaper than the hire company, but does it really protect me from any claims – in theory, do I even need to check the car when I pick it up?

[csearle]

Personally I'd go with a big name. I'd go for the smallest vehicle you can possibly get away with and avoid at all costs being upgraded to a bigger vehicle, even if its free (because the streets are tiny). I would also avoid any more insurance than the basic. Chris

[Bminusrob]

There are various comparison websites (eg Holiday Autos) through which you can make bookings with big names or smaller companies.

As Chris said, avoid all the upgrades. We hired a car in Mallorca in October, and one of the possible upgrades was a satnav, which we declined, on the basis that I had brought my satvav with me, and my wife and I each had Google Maps on our phones. When we got the car, it had a satnav anyway.

The other thing to avoid is insurance upgrades. They can be hideously expensive. You can buy an annual insurnce excess policy for about £40 (eg insurance4carhire.com), which is far cheaper than the car company upgrade for anything more than about three days. The only thing is, if you don't take our the car company policy, they will "hold" about £1000 on your credit card (they don't actually take the money, but it is reserved just in case, so you don't have it to spend until a few days after you return the car).

Have a great time. It is an amazing place, as long as you keep well away from Magaluf and the likes.

[swill453]

Have a look at the relevant forum on TripAdvisor, there are usually one or two long-running topics on which of the local firms are good and which to avoid. See if you can determine a consensus.

I agree use 3rd party excess insurance, but you have to be very careful about checking before and after for damage, as you'd need to make a fairly detailed claim if it came to it.

Scott.

[yorkshirelad1]

if it looks too good/cheap to be true, it probably is.
stick with mainstream (avoid Goldcar: see Guardian Money pages on a Saturday if you want to know why)
take photos before you move the car from the parking and when you return it
buy your own free-standing excess insurance (e.g. https://www.icarhireinsurance.com/ )
do not be persuaded into an "upgrade"
take the DVLA car hire code (just in case, I've never been asked for it; https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hiring-a-vehicle)
make sure you have a credit card with sufficient credit available for them to hold/block a large deposit

HTH

[swill453]

take photos before you move the car from the parking and when you return it

I'd go further than that. Make sure any damage on the car when you pick it up is marked on the paperwork, even if it means going back to the office.

Scott.

[DrFfybes]

We follow MotoGP a fair bit, so we hire quite a few cars abroad, and have found there is little difference between big and small companies. The hire companies base themselves near airports, so Airport collection is often cheaper than from the City Centre (eg Malaga).

The thing to note is the insurance - the "Fully Comp" offered when you book has a large excess, usually over 1000E. However when you collect the car they will offer "CDW" or collision damage waiver insurance which covers this excess. The cost of this is often as much as the car hire.

However, you can get the same cover before you go from a variety of online providers. Last year we used AXA, but we have used others in the past and it comes in about 3 quid per day or £50 or so for a year. Search for Car Hire Excess Cover and look at https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-car-hire.

Regarding the cars, again a mixed bag. The worst car we ever had was from Hertz in Malaga who said "no damage" and the thing was like a 50p piece. After 3 days we realised the passenger door never locked. The best car was a Goldcar when we went to the Winter test last Feb and March in Jerez, as it was start of the hire season we got a brand new 5 mile old hatchback.

In all cases collection and drop off is often very basic and unchecked, so you worry about spurious follow-up claims, so the things to note are
1) Mark any existing damage on the collection form INCLUDING interior/boot trim (hertz just gave us the form to do ourselves!)
2) photograph the car on return unless they check it in and sign the form as undamaged.

Hiring via the airline is often as cheap as anywhere, but a popular comparison site amongst the teams is https://www.doyouspain.com/index.htm

Watch out for the fuel rules - I prefer to hire "full to Full" and top up a few miles from the drop off.

Lastly if you have an EU satnav then take it with you - they will offer to hire you one but it is expensive and you have to learn to use it.

Paul

[AF62]

There are two ways to book a rental car -
- Direct with the company
- Through an agency site such as Holiday Autos

If you book through an agency you will probably get a cheaper price but if anything goes wrong, well good luck getting the agency to sort it.

Small company vs Big. Luck of the draw. Some of the cheap companies such as Goldcar (and the other names they go by as Goldcar has such an awful reputation) are really poor - horrendous queues, real hard sell, dubious maintenance, etc, whereas the big names you are likely to get better service and a better maintained car.

Insurance. Most just offer with the hire of the car an extremely basic policy which has a very high excess (£1,000+) which you can expect to pay for the smallest mark. You can reduced this to zero by paying for an addon, but it is expensive - usually a couple of hundred pounds a week. As mentioned you can buy a policy from companies who sell them in the UK for about £40 a year, but... you will have to leave a deposit on your credit card for the £1000+ excess (and beware the trick of "your credit card doesn't work, so you will have to buy our insurance" for the car hire desk), you will get a hard sell from the car hire desk about it "not being as good", you will have to pay the £1000+ excess if there is a dent and then claim it back from the UK company.

Some of the car hire companies are now bundling the breakdown cover into the excess addon, so if you don't buy that you don't get breakdown cover.

Be careful if you hire through an agency site such as Holiday Autos as the insurance they offer you isn't the car hire company insurance but the £40 UK excess insurance product, which they have marked up to £80 so you will encounter the same issues at the desk.

Fuel. It used to be standard to do 'full to full' - you take it away full and bring it back full. However some of the lower end companies now do 'full to empty' so you either take it back not having used all the fuel or you risk running out as you try to deliver it back empty. And they overcharge you for the full tank in the first place.

As for looking over the car before you take it away, yes that is a good idea but if they are crooks they will still be able to cheat you. There have been numerous reports in the press recently about one UK firm that when a car is returned has an uncanny ability to be able see a scratch that is underneath a bumper (even if the bumper is filthy dirty), with a resulting charge of around five hundred pounds to fix it.

My recommendation would be to stay away from the bottom of the barrel companies like Goldcar, take out an annual excess insurance policy, check the car over when you take it out (and take lots of photos as you return it), have at least two credit cards that can take the deposit, and be prepared for a hard sell when you decline the extras.

As for getting a new car, my preference is to get one that is 'lived in' as I worry less then. The last car I picked up from Malaga was from a local company who had a 'no excess' policy. Although the car was only 12 months old it had dents and scratches on every single panel on the car, including the roof (how?). However that meant I didn't worry when I left the car parked in a backstreet in Seville or Jerez for a couple of days, or squeezing down some narrow backstreet in a village. Drop off for the car was "leave it in the airport multi-story with the keys and the parking ticket under the mat and text us the parking space number"! Whereas the car I got in Santander was brand new and I was terrified every time I walked away from it.

[Peltiq]

There are two ways to book a rental car -
- Direct with the company
- Through an agency site such as Holiday Autos

If you book through an agency you will probably get a cheaper price but if anything goes wrong, well good luck getting the agency to sort it.

Small company vs Big. Luck of the draw. Some of the cheap companies such as Goldcar (and the other names they go by as Goldcar has such an awful reputation) are really poor - horrendous queues, real hard sell, dubious maintenance, etc, whereas the big names you are likely to get better service and a better maintained car.

Insurance. Most just offer with the hire of the car an extremely basic policy which has a very high excess (£1,000+) which you can expect to pay for the smallest mark. You can reduced this to zero by paying for an addon, but it is expensive - usually a couple of hundred pounds a week. As mentioned you can buy a policy from companies who sell them in the UK for about £40 a year, but... you will have to leave a deposit on your credit card for the £1000+ excess (and beware the trick of "your credit card doesn't work, so you will have to buy our insurance" for the car hire desk), you will get a hard sell from the car hire desk about it "not being as good", you will have to pay the £1000+ excess if there is a dent and then claim it back from the UK company.

Some of the car hire companies are now bundling the breakdown cover into the excess addon, so if you don't buy that you don't get breakdown cover.

Be careful if you hire through an agency site such as Holiday Autos as the insurance they offer you isn't the car hire company insurance but the £40 UK excess insurance product, which they have marked up to £80 so you will encounter the same issues at the desk.

Fuel. It used to be standard to do 'full to full' - you take it away full and bring it back full. However some of the lower end companies now do 'full to empty' so you either take it back not having used all the fuel or you risk running out as you try to deliver it back empty. And they overcharge you for the full tank in the first place.

As for looking over the car before you take it away, yes that is a good idea but if they are crooks they will still be able to cheat you. There have been numerous reports in the press recently about one UK firm that when a car is returned has an uncanny ability to be able see a scratch that is underneath a bumper (even if the bumper is filthy dirty), with a resulting charge of around five hundred pounds to fix it.

My recommendation would be to stay away from the bottom of the barrel companies like Goldcar, take out an annual excess insurance policy, check the car over when you take it out (and take lots of photos as you return it), have at least two credit cards that can take the deposit, and be prepared for a hard sell when you decline the extras.

As for getting a new car, my preference is to get one that is 'lived in' as I worry less then. The last car I picked up from Malaga was from a local company who had a 'no excess' policy. Although the car was only 12 months old it had dents and scratches on every single panel on the car, including the roof (how?). However that meant I didn't worry when I left the car parked in a backstreet in Seville or Jerez for a couple of days, or squeezing down some narrow backstreet in a village. Drop off for the car was "leave it in the airport multi-story with the keys and the parking ticket under the mat and text us the parking space number"! Whereas the car I got in Santander was brand new and I was terrified every time I walked away from it.

I agree with everything AF62 says.

Spanish car hire firms do everything they can to rip off the unaware foreign tourists and hirers should read the small print on their hire contracts closely. Beware of extra charges for using a debit card (even if you used a credit card), hiring a diesel car (even if you didn't ask for one), local airport "taxes" and off-airport parking and transfer fees.

Always photograph the car from all angles before you get in it and include the wheels/tyres.

The EU could make better use of its time by investigating these shysters rather than the shape of bananas.

In the past I have used https://www.doyouspain.com/index.htm and their prices are usually reasonable.

[yorkshirelad1]

Nice tip about watching for the breakdown cover in the car hire company's own excess insurance: will have to watch for that.

Two further thoughts: unless you really want to, avoid renting direct from your airline's website (if you're flying in!):
a) that's what everyone else does and the queues on arrival are long (whereas the non-airline affiliated companies have shorter queues!)
b) watch that the times of flights arrival/dept and the times of car pickup/dropoff etc match (there was a story in the Guardian Money not long ago where someone did a click through rental from airline to car hire, but the local car rental office was closed before the flight arrived: doh....!)

[Howard]

I must have rented cars at least a hundred times over the years. On business and more recently on holidays. In Europe, West Indies and the USA.

Usually I have used the bigger car rental companies but occasionally a small agency when, for example, the car was rented for a few days from a hotel.

I have never been "ripped off" but recently, thanks to the charm of the Irish guy at Shannon airport, weakly agreed to an upgrade to a BMW SUV instead of a Ford and paid the price!

The problem with cheap local companies can be that the cars are not serviced properly. Once when renting in Maderia from the hotel supplier I was given a car with very dodgy brakes. This has never happened with a big supplier.

As others have recommended, I always check the car on pick up and insist any damage is recorded on the company paperwork. To be honest, Mrs H, usually does the check, because I am busy with luggage etc and she picks up flaws I might have missed. Long ago I made it a policy to never accept CDW from the rental desk. We have a £40 excess policy with an independent insurer but I have never had to claim.

Full to full is the best policy for fuel. I have always regretted paying for a full tank as it's difficult to return it empty so the rental company usually benefits substantially from generous renters giving them litres of fuel on return!

I agree with the advice to go for a small car when renting, particularly in somewhere like Mallorca. And, although at home our cars are immaculate, the ideal rental car is one with a few scrapes as it is more relaxing when leaving it parked in a city centre. I've never bothered to photograph the car because getting the company paperwork right on initial collection is the best protection.

Have a great holiday and hopefully a relaxed rental.

Howard

[Watis]

I went to Mallorca a few years ago and hired a car from Carjet at Palma airport. However, it now appears to be a comparison website. Maybe it was before, I don't recall - it was over ten years ago.

There were no issues with the car, which was nearly new and first registered that year. I did have to go and find it in the airport multi-storey car park (I'm sure they gave me a rough idea where it was!).

If you do book with this, or possibly any other company, just be sure you've selected Palma, Mallorca. When I booked my car I hadn't noticed that I had selected Palma in Spain and it was only the different selection of vehicles compared to my previous visits to the website that alerted me to my error. I wonder how many people do end up hiring a vehicle at the wrong location?

HTH,

Watis

[Watis]

There are various comparison websites (eg Holiday Autos) through which you can make bookings with big names or smaller companies.

As Chris said, avoid all the upgrades. We hired a car in Mallorca in October, and one of the possible upgrades was a satnav, which we declined, on the basis that I had brought my satvav with me, and my wife and I each had Google Maps on our phones. When we got the car, it had a satnav anyway.

The other thing to avoid is insurance upgrades. They can be hideously expensive. You can buy an annual insurnce excess policy for about £40 (eg insurance4carhire.com), which is far cheaper than the car company upgrade for anything more than about three days. The only thing is, if you don't take our the car company policy, they will "hold" about £1000 on your credit card (they don't actually take the money, but it is reserved just in case, so you don't have it to spend until a few days after you return the car).

Have a great time. It is an amazing place, as long as you keep well away from Magaluf and the likes.

I can recommend insurance4carhire. I have actually had to make a claim with them, so can confirm that they are a professional outfit.

Watis

[swill453]

The problem with cheap local companies can be that the cars are not serviced properly. Once when renting in Maderia from the hotel supplier I was given a car with very dodgy brakes. This has never happened with a big supplier.

It has for me. I hired from Sixt in Tenerife. Soon I noticed a squealing from the brakes, which over the evening and the next morning on mountainous hairpin bends turned into a full-on grinding of metal on metal.

Soon sorted with a replacement car, but a definite sign of poor maintenance as far as I'm concerned.

Scott.

[swill453]

I can recommend insurance4carhire. I have actually had to make a claim with them, so can confirm that they are a professional outfit.

That's good to know, I've used them for a few years but never had to claim.

Scott.

[stockton]

Two additional points.
If you hire through an agency with a british office you may well be able to use the Small Claims court to sort out any problems.
In Spain if you believe you are being cheated, ask for the "complaints book", which is actually a set of forms which you can fill in at your leisure. If they will not give you the forms you call the police. Simply asking for the forms often produces a significant change of attitude.