Car hire can leave you seriously out of pocket with these excesses, I always recommend that my clients book with a company which either has no excess to pay or if they hire a car abroad more than twice a year, take out excess insurance cover.

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Well, I actually just wrote a blog post about a special circumstance that you need to be aware of when you hire a car in Hawaii. You may be carrying along um, “extra passengers” that you’d prefer not to have. The post starts out in a semi-rant to the rental car company and then finishes off with advice for what do do with the “extra passengers”. I’ve linked to the post via my name in this comment.

Another tip I’d like to share is to avoid using valet services to park your hire car. We had an incident where the valet service at a restaurant damaged our rental car and wouldn’t take responsibility for it. We ended up having to pay $250 to have the damage repaired.

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I know, it is sometimes time consuming and not always pretty, especially if the temperature is above 30 Celsius and you had to wait a long time in a queue. but I have as standard procedure to inspect the car very carefully before I drive off. If I note a dent or scratch I go back to the desk and let the guy or girl sign off on them. Thus far, knock wood, I never experienced a claim.
It also depends on the car hire company. Usually I use Hertz, Avis or Europ Car. They are known to have reasonable new cars. One time I hired a small van in Austria with minus 17 km on its mileage. It came just from the car dealer.
On another issue: Please always make sure that co drivers are registered on the rental contract.

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Thank you for the tips.

We always use Avis to book our car hire and hope to in Austria. Well if Avis have car hire in the airport.

Does anyone know?

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Unbelievable! This just happened to me a few hours ago at the Calgary airport. The rental stall is in underground parking and when I got out into the light there were two rock chips in the window! I called them 10 minutes later and they apologized.

Now, will it be charged on my card when I return the car in 10 days?

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As a representative of Auto Europe UK I am interested to read this article and your comments. It is reassuring to hear that so many of you already take the time to check your hire car before driving off. It is usual to receive a picture of the car showing any existing damage marked on it with your rental paperwork. If not, then taking pictures is a good tip or you can ask the rental staff to sign off the damages.

A few other tips to a trouble free rental inlcude:

* Insurance, following on from Karen’s point re excess cover, I’d like to point out that it is always better value to take out an excess insurance policy before you travel. It can be very expensive to take out a daily policy at the rental desk on arrival. Auto Europe offers a refundable excess policy which normally costs an extra £6-£10 for your entire trip (costs approximate and depend on the lenght of the hire) rather than per day! It also covers 100% of your excess, beware as not all policies do.

* Check the petrol policy before you set off. Different hire companies vary but normally the policy will be empty to empty, full to full or you may even need to return it with half a tank. A number of rental companies now offer the opportunity to purchase a tank of fuel up front. This is likely to be cheaper than the fee levied if you return the car empty when it should be full, but more expensive than going to the garage yourself.

* Do your best to leave enough time to have the vehicle checked by staff when you return it. Ask for a signed document testifying to the state of vehicle as you returned it. This is a second step to protect you if there is any discrepancy over the state of the vehicle once you’ve returned home.

Unfortunately incidents like the Florida example do occur from time to time but, as I hope my comment illustrates, protecting yourself from such mistakes is pretty much common sense. The more travellers who can follow these steps the better!

If you have any other questions about car hire I may be able to help with, please feel free to ask me here or on our blog http://auto-europe.blogspot.com We would be delighted to help.

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We had a client once, his rental was kicked, no, banged was more like it, by a kangaroo. There was a funny debate with the agent as well. Thankfully, the vehicle was insured.

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