Car hire price comparison sites don’t compare like with like
Written by Karen Bryan
We’re going to Italy for a week in May and will need to hire a car, so I decided to look at Travelsupermarket.co.uk car hire comparison facility. However I think that the search results are not a true comparison, as all of the cheapest quotes were not actually an inclusive price, as there was an excess of several hundred euros to pay if the hire car was stolen or damaged. Most companies offer a no insurance excess if you pay an extra fee for this. With most of these policies you’ll have to pay the excess and then reclaim it. You may also have to pay more for an additional driver.
Economycarhire include no insurance excess and a second driver in their prices. However Economycarhire came up at number 11 in the Travelsupermarket search results. The other companies with cheaper quotes had additional charges for no insurance excess and a second driver. However for our quote for Italy in May, Economycarhire have an additional charge of 20 euros plus VAT, for an out of hours pick up, as we arrive on a Saturday evening at 18:00.
It’s really hard to work out which is the best deal for car hire. I think it would be great if Travelsupermarket could list exactly what is included in the price to allow you to make a valid comparison. That’s probably too much to ask as some of the car hire sites don’t even list all the additional fees, they say something like “charge for second driver payable locally”.
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Research, research, research – has to be the way to go with all things like this, a lot of holiday companies now offer car hire in the package, but as commented above, the small print must be read to find the best deal.
You’re right the only way to get the best (lowest price, truly inclusive) car hire deal is to spend time doing reaseatch, boring but true. You could pay almost double the price to rent your car if you don’t shop around. If you don’t read the small print there’s the chance you could be hundreds of euros out of pocket if you are unlucky enough to damage the hire car or it is stolen.
[...] Welcome to my blog, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!With car hire it’s not generally the cheapest price that’s the best deal for you as you have to judge the quote on their final total truly inclusive price. We’re flying to Pisa for a week at the end of My 2008 and need to hire a car as we’re visiting rural Umbria and Lake Trasimeno. I booked the flights a few months ago and did start looking for car hire in January but gave up as it wasn’t easy to compare like with like. [...]
Yes it is very boring searching around for hours on end, but the prices you find are extremley different.
Yes Kellie, many consumers think with the new meta search comparison sites that finding the best deal will be quick and easy but particularly with car hire this is not the case.
No its not the case, was loads cheaper when i individually searched.
Comparison site be careful. Everyone is correct you can never know exactly who is the cheapest because they all display the prices in a different format, normally to add confusion to what your actually getting and what the price actually includes.
The best way to get around this is to only use the main car hire brokers such as Okreserved as they have direct access to the booking system of the car hire companies so what you see is always what you pay. Also be aware of the text “FREE upgrade on this vehicle” its another way of getting you to buy. All the car rental companies will give you a free upgrade if they are running low on the most popular models, but it will cost you more as they normally are not as economical
Always look at the about us page on the car hire rental sites , are they a registered company, you should only use LTD companies or preferably PLC companies as you have the benefit of a number of associations that can help you if they fail to provide the right level of service