Can someone recommend a decent hire car company? reasonable price and service. Last hire car company we used was terrible. Picked us up at the airport took us to their depot about 30-45 minutes drive just to pick up our car. ..... the biggest red little bomb, Hyundai Getz, cigarette holes in the seats, manual, 3 door... surely there must be a certain standard required for hire vehicle? I don't expect a red Ferrari, but this was bad. My partner liked the idea of manual for about 5 hours and then he was over it. Thought he thought it was amazing $100 for 4 days, cheap for a reason. We met up with a friend and they mentioned we should offer the car hire company another $100 to buy it. Back to my story, we always seem to have problems when hiring cars, there is a common denominator here.... guess who? Anyway, I am taking charge of this Recommendations please??
I've always had good experience with Lowest rates for car hire Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne | East Coast Car Rentals but only their Cairns office. Even with the added insurance to reduce the excess the rates are still reasonable. But I'm not fussed on driving around in a Getz, Swift or Pulsar I think it was. The car have always been nicely presented though.
In perth bayswater are good value and provide a good, consistent product. When travelling withun australia i tend to use one of the big companies, depending on who has ghe best rates or if i have access to a corporate discount etc. Last couple were hertz from memory. Ultimately you get what you pay for, unless youre willing to spend a heap of time researching the smaller players its too much work. Just pay the extra. Btw, if you have travel insurance you are often covered for hire car excess so dont let them charge you those ridiculous fees.
not looking for luxury European car, but this was really old car. I take responsibility for this, but I thought there would be a certain standard required in terms of age of car etc.
Hehe... I can laugh at this comment because I am the opposite, I enjoy money, we are only here for a short time. This purely comes down to not doing the homework, that is why I am taking charge of this in future. Same as booking travel.
I have used Bayswater a couple of times from Sydney and it can be a bit of a pain getting the car if you are getting it from the airport. I now just use the comparison on the Qantas website and see what special/points bonuses are on offer.
No idea. There's a company here called 'rent-a-bomb' where you can hire older crappier cars for cheap but I actually found them to be dearer than East Coast Car Rentals.
I had good service and did not get hit with any unexpected fees, what did they chsrge you for? Ultimately i suspect the differences between the large players will be minor and down to personal preference, sort of like woolies vs coles and nab vs cba. The difference between say a hertz or some independent hire company with 10 cars is likely to be much larger.
Why would you want to hire a crappy car if you are reasonably well off? Why not get a better car and enjoy your trip?
We hire cars on a regular basis. I just go the the VroomVroom website, put in my requirements and it produces their best rates from Avis, Hertz, Europecar and a couple of others. I look through the list of cars (typically a couple of screens), sort by price, car size, etc and make my selection. Never had a problem. Picking up a Europecar hire car tomorrow at Melbourne Airport. It is $236 for 4 days for a Corolla Automatic. That is, $60 per day and that is the full price. The booking before that was Thrifty car. The one before that was Redspot. You get the message. I can't guarantee it is the absolute cheapest but I just want to pick up a clean, good quality car at a fair price from the airport with NO hassles. Not interested in Hire-a-Wreck, etc.
I usually use Hertz more often than not. Disappointed with Avis a few times with car smelling of cigarettes, not having kid seats etc but also exceeded expectations with a brand new (ie <100km high performance Ford (great upgrade). If you are sporting travel insurance, check your policy as you may be able to waive any additional insurance cover as well (almost as expensive as the car hire).
Good point that I should have mentioned. We have Corporate Travel insurance (via our business trust) paid annually so that we don't need to take up the hire car companies' policies.
be very careful with this, we thought we were covered on visa card but at the time we were on platinum but cant recall now but this needed upgrading. We had a minor car accident and found out the hard way. They keep a massive excess I think around $5000 and then get a quote and deduct from credit card.
@MTR - I don't rely on the insurance which comes with my cards, we hold separate annual travel insurance which covers the excess.
Using thrifty at the moment. You get the best discount with Racv card, 10-15% depending on card you have. Be careful of indercarrage damage as all policy's aren't covered with triffty/hertz/Europe car etc. I have grazed the front bumper underneath removing some of the paint when parking. So I'm guessing that will be 500-1000 they will charge me. I'm thinking I should drive it into a tree as I'm fully covered and will be repaired for free. Hmmm what to do
