Stupidly cheap car hire - how does this work?

[Clariman]

We're heading off to Majorca for 10 days and I'm looking at car hire on HolidayAutos. It shows that I can hire a car from a few companies at £28 to £35 for the WHOLE TEN DAYS. How does that work? Are they companies that have a glut of cars available after the main summer holidays and want to get SOME return on them? Or is that an alarm bell for a company that wants the car out there, so they can charge hundreds of £s afterwards for the slightest scratch or fleck of dust? Companies are GoldCar, inter-rent and OK rent-a-car.

Europcar is about £157 for the same period and they have a FAR higher rating on HolidayAutos.

Cheers
C

[Lootman]

My first thought would be whether there is small print in the contract that compels you to buy insurance when you arrive?

I had that happen at a US airport once when I arrived late. They claimed that since I was a foreigner, I had to buy insurance at $20 a day, or whatever it was.

[UncleIan]

We're heading off to Majorca for 10 days and I'm looking at car hire on HolidayAutos. It shows that I can hire a car from a few companies at £28 to £35 for the WHOLE TEN DAYS. How does that work? Are they companies that have a glut of cars available after the main summer holidays and want to get SOME return on them? Or is that an alarm bell for a company that wants the car out there, so they can charge hundreds of £s afterwards for the slightest scratch or fleck of dust? Companies are GoldCar, inter-rent and OK rent-a-car.

Europcar is about £157 for the same period and they have a FAR higher rating on HolidayAutos.

They all have massive excesses that you need to insure against. I took out excess insurance and Goldcar recently gave me the pretty hard sell on their extra insurance (at 10EUR a day, when I paid about £20 for two weeks). I didn't double check but I suspect their excesses were in excess of what I insured for separately. I'd expect them all to do the same. So yes, the money they make is on the excess insurance that you don't seem to be able to get until you arrive at the desk. My experience with goldcar, I pointed out some stuff that was damaged and not on the damage sheet at the start, queried it with them, and they weren't interested in anything smaller than 5cm. I still videod the bodywork with my smartphone before I got in, just in case.

[malkymoo]

Do a search on" Goldcar reviews" and that will tell you all you need to know about them. Cannot comment on the other companies.

[Ma1co1m]

I got a car from Goldcar last year in Malaga. I'm not stupid ( I thought ! ) as I hire cars abroad several times a year and I have an annual XS policy. But this time the price was so ridiculously cheap that I assumed they were going to stiff me later on a "damage" and even though I've got an annual policy ( which I have never had to claim on. Yet... ) I even went back and bought Goldcar's XS insurance.
"Ha ! Safe now" I thought. What did I say about "not stupid" ??

So I picked up the car and of course there's a big queue and they are in a rush and speak quickly at you and give you papers that are all in Spanish to sign etc etc and ask for credit cards etc etc - you know the game. Anyway, when I got my breath back that evening and translated the paperwork I found I had paid extra for the following:
Airport Surcharge
Diesel tax
Bail bond ( ! )
Smart Return
Mega Relax Cover ( whatever the *** that is )

Which, all in all, brought the price up to ( or possible even more than ) the likes of Sixt

So beware of cheap deals. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck....

ma1co1m

[Clitheroekid]

This says it all about Goldcar - https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/goldcar.gr

There have also been many highly critical articles in the Telegraph about them, bit it's useless providing links as they're paywalled.

[DrFfybes]

This says it all about Goldcar - https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/goldcar.gr

There have also been many highly critical articles in the Telegraph about them, bit it's useless providing links as they're paywalled.

OK, we went to Jerez last year and I hired through Goldcar for 3 days. We were given a 6 mile (yup, six) old Corsa. It was raining and they tried to add the excess. I said I was fine and besides "I'm English, we only crash in the dry". The clerk looked horrified. Jerez airport is quiet in March so no rushing or queuing.
The car was returned and no problems or contact since.

In July we went to Berlin, had a car from Europcar. Paid the E174.98 online but was told i needed to pay an extra 33.30 when I arrived as they had only received 141.68. I took the car and said they had been paid, and then 3 weeks after my return I was charged 33.30 on my card. I know this as I have the paperwork at the side of me which the card co is sorting out.

I've also had Hertz from Malaga. "No damage" he said but the car was like a 50p piece. When I went back to the desk (which is inside the terminal so you need a boarding card to get to it) he just drew an 'x' on every panel and handed it to me. 3 days into the hire we realised the central locking only worked on the driver door, not the boot or passenger door.

Really it just seems to be pot luck.

Paul

[MyNameIsUrl]

We're heading off to Majorca for 10 days and I'm looking at car hire on HolidayAutos.

Suggest you try also auto-europe.com which is a comparison website (recommended by Martin Lewis). I booked Europcar through them and turned up at the desk with a printed voucher, no sell-on at the desk when collecting the car. Europcar have a 55mm policy on scrapes and chips - anything smaller doesn't count.

Suggest also you get car hire excess insurance in the uk before you go - I paid £35 for a full year from Allianz via coverforyou.com, also a ML recommendation.

[AF62]

GoldCar (and their alternative name, Iridium) work on scaring the customers who have prepaid the cheap price into paying for their overpriced CDW, and that includes those who have already bought Excess Insurance in the UK. They also used to do full to empty, and charged fees for providing the full tank and charging a premium price for the fuel it was filled with. Queues are incredibly long, so people just want to get away and will sign anything.

Goldcar were bought out by Europcar a year or so ago and there was an expectation that their customer service would improve, however there hasn't been much of a sign of it.

Now one company to run like the wind from is Green Motion. Their modus operandi is finding damage that even a close inspection of the car is unlikely to find, such as a scratch underneath a bumper, but strangely when checking the car back in their employee goes straight to it like an Exocet. And strangely those hidden scratches cost four or five hundred pounds to repair - large enough amounts to smart, but not big enough that anyone considers court action. I had heard it had got so bad that some of the car hire excess insurance companies were excluding cars hired through Green Motion - https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/ ... hire-bills

These days my preference is to either go with one of the main companies such as Enterprise, as once you price in the smaller queues and less hassle it is usually worth it, or a small company where there is no excess.

Not a fan these days of the comparison sites. Prices are usually virtually identical to booking direct and you run the risk of extra hassle by having a middleman if anything goes wrong such as a flight delay.

[swill453]

I go to the relevant Tripadvisor forum, there are usually frequently-updated threads on airport car hire. Sometimes there's standout recommendations for a local company (like malagacar.com in, er, Malaga, which I used and would recommend).

If there's no specific recommendation I'd then go for the cheapest big name, usually something like Thrifty or Budget. Sixt sometimes quotes cheaply, but may be limited mileage so watch out.

Like others I take annual excess insurance for about £40 and resist all upgrades at the desk. The companies I've chosen recently haven't been pushy.

Full-to-full fuel is best, same-to-same or empty-to-empty is annoying because you always waste some, full to empty is always a rip-off.

Scott.

[GoSeigen]

We're heading off to Majorca for 10 days and I'm looking at car hire on HolidayAutos. It shows that I can hire a car from a few companies at £28 to £35 for the WHOLE TEN DAYS. How does that work? Are they companies that have a glut of cars available after the main summer holidays and want to get SOME return on them? Or is that an alarm bell for a company that wants the car out there, so they can charge hundreds of £s afterwards for the slightest scratch or fleck of dust? Companies are GoldCar, inter-rent and OK rent-a-car.

Europcar is about £157 for the same period and they have a FAR higher rating on HolidayAutos.

Cheers
C

Hired a Goldcar recently, low price but when I took it back to their off-airport office just before our flight out of the UK they said it was closing time and so the transfer shuttle would not take us to the terminal. Ended up having to hitch-hike from the nearest roundabout while waiting for a bus with all our luggage. Was not impressed. Fortunately a kind person picked us up and we made our flight.

GS

[redsturgeon]

I have hired cheap off season cars in Spain many times, the cheapest I recall being £12 for 4 days. Never had any problems. I have used Firefly, Goldcar and others I've never heard of before. Never had a problem, never taken out excess, don't have my own policy. Just lucky I guess.

John

[dspp]

We're heading off to Majorca for 10 days and I'm looking at car hire on HolidayAutos. It shows that I can hire a car from a few companies at £28 to £35 for the WHOLE TEN DAYS. How does that work? Are they companies that have a glut of cars available after the main summer holidays and want to get SOME return on them? Or is that an alarm bell for a company that wants the car out there, so they can charge hundreds of £s afterwards for the slightest scratch or fleck of dust? Companies are GoldCar, inter-rent and OK rent-a-car. Europcar is about £157 for the same period and they have a FAR higher rating on HolidayAutos.

Cheers
C

I've just come back from some time in Greece and I can tell you one way this does not work for the customer.

!!! AVOID RENTALCARS.com !!! They are a proper bunch of scammers.

I ordinarily use Avis and I am a top tier card holder, renting two or three times a month. I sometimes use Europcar when Avis get their pricing badly wrong, which unfortunately they do a lot at the moment (ugh - EDI I'm looking at you). I've hired from Avis in Lefkas town before and the office address is 10 Petrou Filippou, Filippa Panagou, Lefkada 311 00, Greece which is a small street where quite a few car rental companies have their offices. On this occasion Avis quoted me about £350 for smallest/cheapest, and I could see on line that Rentalcars.com quoted me £129. When I spoke to the Avis call centre they would not budge on pricing and I figured this was far too steep a differential. So I checked where the Rentalcars.com office was in Lefkas and indeed it was in Filippa Panagou street, so at least in the cluster and not out in nowhereville, and on that basis I decided to give them a go. You pay Rentalcars.com online, and later collect the car at the (wherever) location in the world.

On the day I walked up the street and couldn't see the sign for Rentalcars.com so I looked in the office of Ionian Car Rental (https://www.ioniancarrental.com/) who are just down the street from Avis and asked which shopfront it was. They politely waved me onwards to the Avis shopfront and said very politely "but you'll be back, just come here and we'll help you".

Rather puzzled I walked on and went in to the Avis office and showed them my Rentalcars.com booking slip and they waved me to the back desk where a rather offhand lady was sitting. I asked how it worked and she said the Avis desk was the front one and Rentalcars.com was the back one. All one office. All different cars - at least that is what she said. Anyway she asked if I was OK with an automatic and I said I was OK with that, though I prefer manual as that is what I booked, but really I was fine. She then tried to upsell me everything, all of which I politely declined.

She then asked for a card to take the rental deposit, which was at the larger end of what I would consider normal (I think it was 750, not about 250), but anyway I said fine and gave her a card. She popped it in one of a line of POS terminals and waved the screen at me to say error. She was not at all surprised, and by this time nor was I. Now I knew that the card had plenty of credit available on it, several £k. I had been using it fine all week in Greece, and continued to use it all the following week, including hiring a car 5-minutes later, and paying a £2k bill the next morning, and quite a few more every day. I had also noted that the POS terminal did not take a great deal of time to give its error message (supposedly) which was all of course in Greek.

Anyway, just for the heck of it I gave her my backup card from a different bank, which I keep clean but with the same credit limit. Same immediate response. Without batting an eyelid she said she couldn't rent a card to me as I couldn't make the gte payment. I of course asked for my payment back. "oh no, go see Rentalcars.com, we are just the local affiliate", and "goodbye".

I did not go to the front (Avis) desk. Instead I walked back to Ionian Car Rental, all of 10-metres down the street at 16 Filippa Panagou. They told me that they'd already seen the same thing happen a few times that morning. Basically Rentalcars.com were giving cheap rates, but the local affiliate could make more money out of hiring directly. It would seem that if they cannot get any upsells into the contract then the way the affiliate does the reject is to have a dud POS terminal so as to do an immediate error/decline on the card. That way they don't have to reveal to Rentalcars.com what they are up to.

Very politely and efficiently Ionian rented me a smallest/cheapest and off I went. They did not seek to extort huge numbers, just the £300 that was their last week of high season rent. I highly recommend them.

So basically if you use any of these cheap on-line rental platforms you need to be sure that the local affiliate is a decent outfit, not a thoroughly disreputable outfit like the one in Lefkas. At the very least you need to have a backup plan.

My card company has just refunded me the Rentalcars.com payment. But that is somewhat beside the point. If I had known in advance I could have used either Avis (in which case various goodies & upgrades would have been thrown in), or I could have (say, and will do next time) used Ionian Car Rental and negotiated an advance deal.

Needless to say having a shower like this operating out of the same office as Avis gives one pause for thought.

YMMV.

regards, dspp

[production100]

Needless to say having a shower like this operating out of the same office as Avis gives one pause for thought.

Is it worth a word with Avis to alert them to the scam going on in 'their' office area? Their MD should be quite alarmed...

[Howard]

We're heading off to Majorca for 10 days and I'm looking at car hire on HolidayAutos. It shows that I can hire a car from a few companies at £28 to £35 for the WHOLE TEN DAYS. How does that work? Are they companies that have a glut of cars available after the main summer holidays and want to get SOME return on them? Or is that an alarm bell for a company that wants the car out there, so they can charge hundreds of £s afterwards for the slightest scratch or fleck of dust? Companies are GoldCar, inter-rent and OK rent-a-car. Europcar is about £157 for the same period and they have a FAR higher rating on HolidayAutos.

Cheers
C

I've just come back from some time in Greece and I can tell you one way this does not work for the customer.

!!! AVOID RENTALCARS.com !!! They are a proper bunch of scammers.

I ordinarily use Avis and I am a top tier card holder, renting two or three times a month. I sometimes use Europcar when Avis get their pricing badly wrong, which unfortunately they do a lot at the moment (ugh - EDI I'm looking at you). I've hired from Avis in Lefkas town before and the office address is 10 Petrou Filippou, Filippa Panagou, Lefkada 311 00, Greece which is a small street where quite a few car rental companies have their offices. On this occasion Avis quoted me about £350 for smallest/cheapest, and I could see on line that Rentalcars.com quoted me £129. When I spoke to the Avis call centre they would not budge on pricing and I figured this was far too steep a differential. So I checked where the Rentalcars.com office was in Lefkas and indeed it was in Filippa Panagou street, so at least in the cluster and not out in nowhereville, and on that basis I decided to give them a go. You pay Rentalcars.com online, and later collect the car at the (wherever) location in the world.

On the day I walked up the street and couldn't see the sign for Rentalcars.com so I looked in the office of Ionian Car Rental (https://www.ioniancarrental.com/) who are just down the street from Avis and asked which shopfront it was. They politely waved me onwards to the Avis shopfront and said very politely "but you'll be back, just come here and we'll help you".



Needless to say having a shower like this operating out of the same office as Avis gives one pause for thought.

YMMV.

regards, dspp

Do you still have your paperwork for Rentalcars.com? The reason I ask is that I'm puzzled why you would look for a sign for them as they aren't a car hire company. They are a "broker" who find you good deals with car hire companies. They describe themselves in these terms claiming that they are the biggest in the world - see quote below.

"We started in 2004 as TravelJigsaw. Four years later, we were making 1000 bookings a day. In 2010, we joined the Priceline Group and rebranded as Rentalcars.com.

Fast forward to today and we’re making 8 million bookings a year (and counting) in over 60,000 locations across 160 countries." They are based in Manchester.

I have used them on several occasions over the last three years, renting in France, Germany and Spain. They offered me a choice of several hire companies. I generally chose Avis but sometimes Enterprise as the supplier. The rates offered by Rentalcars.com were always significantly cheaper than going direct.

I'm actually writing this in France with my Enterprise car parked outside. The service from them has been very good. Automatic car as requested and very good handover at Toulouse Airport.

I'm guessing that your problem was not with Rentalcar.com but with Avis in Greece? Sometimes the service from an Avis franchisee is not as good as it should be. Worth checking your paperwork? You may find that Avis are the culprit here.

regards

Howard

[dspp]

We're heading off to Majorca for 10 days and I'm looking at car hire on HolidayAutos. It shows that I can hire a car from a few companies at £28 to £35 for the WHOLE TEN DAYS. How does that work? Are they companies that have a glut of cars available after the main summer holidays and want to get SOME return on them? Or is that an alarm bell for a company that wants the car out there, so they can charge hundreds of £s afterwards for the slightest scratch or fleck of dust? Companies are GoldCar, inter-rent and OK rent-a-car. Europcar is about £157 for the same period and they have a FAR higher rating on HolidayAutos.

Cheers
C

I've just come back from some time in Greece and I can tell you one way this does not work for the customer.

!!! AVOID RENTALCARS.com !!! They are a proper bunch of scammers.

I ordinarily use Avis and I am a top tier card holder, renting two or three times a month. I sometimes use Europcar when Avis get their pricing badly wrong, which unfortunately they do a lot at the moment (ugh - EDI I'm looking at you). I've hired from Avis in Lefkas town before and the office address is 10 Petrou Filippou, Filippa Panagou, Lefkada 311 00, Greece which is a small street where quite a few car rental companies have their offices. On this occasion Avis quoted me about £350 for smallest/cheapest, and I could see on line that Rentalcars.com quoted me £129. When I spoke to the Avis call centre they would not budge on pricing and I figured this was far too steep a differential. So I checked where the Rentalcars.com office was in Lefkas and indeed it was in Filippa Panagou street, so at least in the cluster and not out in nowhereville, and on that basis I decided to give them a go. You pay Rentalcars.com online, and later collect the car at the (wherever) location in the world.

On the day I walked up the street and couldn't see the sign for Rentalcars.com so I looked in the office of Ionian Car Rental (https://www.ioniancarrental.com/) who are just down the street from Avis and asked which shopfront it was. They politely waved me onwards to the Avis shopfront and said very politely "but you'll be back, just come here and we'll help you".



Needless to say having a shower like this operating out of the same office as Avis gives one pause for thought.

YMMV.

regards, dspp

Do you still have your paperwork for Rentalcars.com? The reason I ask is that I'm puzzled why you would look for a sign for them as they aren't a car hire company. They are a "broker" who find you good deals with car hire companies. They describe themselves in these terms claiming that they are the biggest in the world - see quote below.

"We started in 2004 as TravelJigsaw. Four years later, we were making 1000 bookings a day. In 2010, we joined the Priceline Group and rebranded as Rentalcars.com.

Fast forward to today and we’re making 8 million bookings a year (and counting) in over 60,000 locations across 160 countries." They are based in Manchester.

I have used them on several occasions over the last three years, renting in France, Germany and Spain. They offered me a choice of several hire companies. I generally chose Avis but sometimes Enterprise as the supplier. The rates offered by Rentalcars.com were always significantly cheaper than going direct.

I'm actually writing this in France with my Enterprise car parked outside. The service from them has been very good. Automatic car as requested and very good handover at Toulouse Airport.

I'm guessing that your problem was not with Rentalcar.com but with Avis in Greece? Sometimes the service from an Avis franchisee is not as good as it should be. Worth checking your paperwork? You may find that Avis are the culprit here.

regards

Howard

Yes I know they are an intermediary. Yes I know they have changed corporate guise a few times. I'm not sure if I would call them a broker as they would appear to have only one affiliate in any one location at any one time (though I am not 100% sure on that). I am unclear whether this affiliate is in any way Avis in Greece. It might be a genuine happenstance of just an office share, or it could be something deeper where the same owner has two franchises running out of the same office. My paperwork from Rentalcars.com is actually for Global Rent a Car Rental Desk, which is not Avis, and there is not a sign for them either just the Avis branding, or at least not that I could see.

I really don't care. I'm just flagging up a downside risk with these intermediaries. On this particular occasion it is Rentalcars.com . Maybe other intermediaries have the same issues as well as Rentalcars.com; or maybe it is utterly random pot luck related to the local affiliate; or maybe just a supply/demand time-of-year thing; or maybe combinations. I am waiting to see if Rentalcars.com respond to my various messages - it will be interesting.

(Funnily enough I ordinarily use Europcar when I rent at Toulouse. Very seldom Enterprise anywhere. Enjoy your trip.)

regards, dspp

[Howard]

Yes I know they are an intermediary. Yes I know they have changed corporate guise a few times. I'm not sure if I would call them a broker as they would appear to have only one affiliate in any one location at any one time (though I am not 100% sure on that). I am unclear whether this affiliate is in any way Avis in Greece. It might be a genuine happenstance of just an office share, or it could be something deeper where the same owner has two franchises running out of the same office. My paperwork from Rentalcars.com is actually for Global Rent a Car Rental Desk, which is not Avis, and there is not a sign for them either just the Avis branding, or at least not that I could see.

I really don't care. I'm just flagging up a downside risk with these intermediaries. On this particular occasion it is Rentalcars.com . Maybe other intermediaries have the same issues as well as Rentalcars.com; or maybe it is utterly random pot luck related to the local affiliate; or maybe just a supply/demand time-of-year thing; or maybe combinations. I am waiting to see if Rentalcars.com respond to my various messages - it will be interesting.

(Funnily enough I ordinarily use Europcar when I rent at Toulouse. Very seldom Enterprise anywhere. Enjoy your trip.)

regards, dspp

As I’m sitting in a hotel room I couldn’t resist looking up your car rental company. They were set up to provide cheap car hire to brokers like Rentalcar.com. See below:

“GLOBAL Rent-a-Car specializes in the growing demand for cheap rental cars and stands for affordable, fair and transparent prices while maintaining a high level of quality. Our customers are the focus and their satisfaction is our biggest maxim.
The founders of GLOBAL Rent-a-Car have over 30 years experience in the car rental industry and enjoy the trust of all major brokers worldwide. To launch the brand, we have put together a strong team of international and experienced specialists.”

So addressing the OP’s question, perhaps your experience suggests that one should avoid cheap car rental companies when using a broker like Rentalcar.com.

From my experience its always been ok to use a broker to rent from Herz, Avis, Enterprise or Sixt and, though I haven’t used them, as you suggest, Europcar.

And, as others have suggested, a standalone excess insurance is essential, then one can decline all offers of expensive insurance from the counter clerks at the time of rental.

Ironically when I collected my car from the rental desk at Toulouse it was shared between Enterprise, Europcar and Alamo, so their franchises here are all probably owned and run by the same company.

regards

Howard

[Jopo1]

I have used stupidly cheap car hire in the past. If you are careful what you sign for and don't buy anything extra, and buy excess insurance before you go, you'll be fine.

My main criteria though is decent service and collecting ON airport, which usually eliminates some of the worst offenders for trying to get more out of you.

Jopo

[AF62]

There is cheap and there is cheap though.

Arrived in Italy yesterday and went to pick my hire car from the Enterprise desk run by a local agent. No queue at all. No hard sell on not paying for the additional cover.

On the opposite side of the area was another car hire desk who I recognised from the price comparison websites that had a queue of around 50 people.

The price difference between what I paid and the other company was asking for - €1 a day.

[JohnB]

From wikipedia " Enterprise Holdings, operator of the largest rental car company in North America, which operates the Alamo Rent A Car, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and National Car Rental brands."