Essential tips to avoid being hit with excessive car hire costs

Hiring a car when you are on holiday is a great way to get around and visit different areas, however sometimes not doing your research means you could end up paying a lot more than you had hoped to.

Research conducted by travelsupermarket.com shows that prices can rise dramatically in the summer months, whilst it was also found that it’s worth being as flexible as possible when it comes to the category of car you book.

There are a number of ways in which you can reduce the cost of your car hire, such as:

• Book alongside flights or a hotel (or both), a package deal may include a discount for car hire – call the tour operator to negotiate a discount.

• Book it as early as possible; prices rise in the summer by 60% in popular European destinations

• Look for online vouchers/discount codes

• Don’t pay extra for a Sat Nav – most mobile phones now include Sat Nav software or an application can be downloaded which can be used for more than just a week or two’s holiday.

• Read the small print online: beware of extra costs such as mileage excess, child seats, taxes etc. Check your booking includes excess insurance; some companies may try and sell you their insurance on top; which won’t be of any use to you if you already have this cover. Also check what exactly you are covered for.

• Replace any fuel used before returning the vehicle, many rental companies hire their cars out with a full tank of fuel and charge you for refilling the tank, often this is higher than the pump price and it’s hard to prove how much fuel was in the car when you picked it up.

• Check the car for any damage BEFORE you leave the rental office, and ask for a note of it to be made (or take pictures if you can) as you may be charged for damage to the car that was already there.

• Ensure you return your car within the agreed time period, otherwise you will incur the cost of another full day’s rental.

Below are some examples which show that booking earlier in the year will save a serious amount on the cost of your car hire:

A people carrier in Faro on 1^st February costs £311, whereas on 28^th June the same vehicle costs £523.66 – an increase of 68%.

An economy car in Murcia in the same time period increased from £133.48 to £205.15, a 54% increase.

A large family car in Palma rose from £233.75 to £384.90, a 65% increase in price.

Travel expert Bob Atkinson from Travelsupermarket.com said: “As was witnessed during the Easter Holidays, there is strong demand for car hire this summer, naturally leading to a pressure on supply and an increase in prices. Undoubtedly, holidaymakers will see prices continue to rise as we move towards the peak summer season.

“Key destinations in Spain, Portugal and the South of France are already seeing significant increases in prices, a firm indication that holidaymakers should book as soon as they can if they plan to hire a vehicle. Also ensure you look at prices of slightly larger or smaller cars if you are flexible, and of course, use a comparison site such as travelsupermarket.com to compare many suppliers at once”.

Low cost car hire is a must for everyone on holiday, however not doing your research can lead to being hit with a rather large bill on the day you return the vehicle.

Other things you should consider:

• Ensure breakdown/emergency numbers are provided before you leave the rental office, as many rental services don’t provide you with these numbers.

• Check Eurotest to see which companies scored the highest in their annual checks (and which companies to avoid!)

Finally, remember to ask for an upgrade, sometimes the car hire companies will offer a free upgrade to the next ‘class’ of cars available.

Written by Tony Haslam, part of the Car Hire team at Travelsupermarket.com

Top 10 drives for those who don’t fancy flying

For those who don’t fancy flying, and want a cool car driving experience, here are a selection of wonderful drives either within the UK or nearby.

Top Drives in the UK - Ring of Kerry

Glasgow to Skye
The roads up from Glasgow to Skye are amazing. You pass many a loch – including Loch Lomond – and go through narrow valleys with staggering mountains either side of you, which are capped with snow even during the height of summer. There’s no other place like it in the UK! And the pay-off of Skye itself is just breathtaking.

Glasgow to Kendal
…Or you could go the other way, and take the M74 through postcard Scottish scenery, the A74(M) over the border (stopping briefly at Gretna to get hitched), and then down the M6 and into the Lake District. At which point you can crack open your Thermos of tea, sit back and let the loveliness wash over you.

Ballater to Blair Atholl
This road over Glenshee in the Scottish highlands is flabbergasting. And if you take a detour at Braemar to the Lynn of Dee, check out Mar Lodge, which is very lovely indeed.

The north Devon coast
If you’re heading right down the south west, then don’t just stick to the motorway. The drive along the Devon Coast between Minehead and Tintagel is superb. A number of the roads are privately owned and they are mere tracks through trees with great views of the sea and beaches below. And there are often honesty boxes with hand-made signs asking for a £1 fee to be paid. It’s a proper time-warp experience, and well worth doing if you’re in that neck of the woods.

The A272
Running from Winchester to near Heathfield in East Sussex, this road is so good that a book was written about it. Pieter Boogaart wrote A272 – An Ode to a Road in its honour, and I don’t blame him. It’s a rural route that’s peppered with quaint little places where folk play cricket on the village green of a weekend, splendid pubs and marvellous places to eat.

The A470 through Wales
This one runs almost the entire length of Wales, and is just shy of 300km. It starts at Cardiff Bay and winds up in Llandudno, zig-zagging through loads of stunning mountainous terrain, such as the Brecon Beacons and Snowdonia National Park. It’s quite a twisty route, so not necessarily recommended if you get car sick – but you’re sure to love it if you don’t.

Ring of Kerry
This is a 179km loop (N70, N71 and R562) around the Iveragh Peninsula, and it’s astounding. And narrow. So narrow, in fact, that all tour buses only travel anti-clockwise around it. Make sure you have adequate car insurance for this trip! Which way you go around is up to you. Going clockwise means you might leap out of your skin when meeting a tour bus coming the other way… I did mention it was narrow, right? Going the same way as the buses means you might get stuck behind them. But then, with countryside this lovely, who wants to rush?

Antrim Coast Road
A 40km stretch of the A2 in Northern Ireland is known as the Antrim Coast Road, and it’s a wonderful drive. It begins at the Black Arch near Larne, and ends at the Red Arch near Cushendal. En route, you can call at The Giant’s Causeway, the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, and Carrickfergus Castle to name but a few. You can also take in the Old Bushmills distillery, although this is admittedly better if you’re not the one driving.

Lot-et-Garonne
Going a bit further afield again, this is a department in France to the south of the Dordogne. The north part of the department is replete with undulating wooded terrain, much like the Dordogne itself. The further south you go, the flatter and more agricultural it becomes. But that’s not to say it’s any less beautiful – there are practically deserted roads with fields of sunflowers either side. And there are plenty of small market towns where you can stop and sample the local produce.

And if you’re going this far, why not push on a little further to…

...the Millau Bridge
The Millau bridge in the Massif Central mountains in France comes highly recommended. The area is a little over 100km east of Bordeaux. The bridge itself is about 300 metres high – taller than the Eiffel Tower, in fact. So it’s not one for those with vertigo. There is no way on Earth I’d ever drive over it, but I have it on good authority that the views of the Tarn valley are absolutely spectacular.

A New Deal for New Car Buyers – The Electric Option.

It’s difficult to be negative about electric cars. After all, everybody else from governments to manufacturers are pumping millions into developing and subsidising the technology involved.

But now that electric cars are a reality, with Nissan beginning production of their Leaf in 2013 and other manufacturers following suit, a few dissenting voices can be heard amongst the positive majority.

Some of the concerns regard the price of these new cars. A new electric car from Nissan will set you back £28,350, a figure which nudges the Leaf into the premium car territory with Mercedes and BMW, but without the luxury pretensions. And a new car deal from BuyaCar can get you a healthy discount off the list price.

Nissan Leaf Electric Car

This sort of comment however is founded on what must surely now be regarded as an old-fashioned mode of thinking. In the post-petrol age, drivers with environmental concerns will surely be willing to pay a premium to keep their cars and their conscience clean.

To think about electric vehicles in solely economic terms is reductive to say the least, though typical and understandable from an entrenched and conservative car buying segment.

The challenge, and manufacturers have taken up this challenge, is to alter people’s very perception of the driving experience.

New cars from Tesla and concepts from Lotus and other sports manufacturers will go a long way towards altering perceptions. They fit false gearboxes and add rorty engine noises to fast but silent and linear powertrains, just to help us get our heads around this new way of driving.

The truth is that electric driving will be a deeply weird experience for most. But, as with all technologies, the trickle-down is from the top. If premium brands make green seem real then everybody else will fall into line.

Green Formula 1 anybody?

Other concerns for sceptics are natural and to do with resale values, for servicing costs and all those things you cannot know until the thing has gone into production.

Sceptics should take some solace from the fact that both Audi and BMW are also focussed on 2012 or 2013 as the date for their lunching a wholly electric vehicle. That’s really not very long and one can only imagine the scenes at Manufacturer HQ, seeing as prototypes are thin on the ground and competition is typically fierce.

BMW have announced the development of a carbon fibre monocoque body for their Megacity, a feature which not only brings the price and the weight down but performance and the range of the car up.

Manufacturers are forcing the pace of change, and reality is struggling to keep up.

I can only speak for myself, but receiving my driving license was arguably the proudest moment of my life, better than getting into university, better than my first kiss and better than getting drunk for the first time (just about).

Driving Lessons

I had always wanted to drive from when I was old enough to sit upright behind the steering wheel. I would jump into my father’s lap as he swung his VW Scirocco into the driveway (obviously he stopped and opened the door first. I’m not a gymnast) and he would let me ‘drive’ the car down to the garage doors. Not an officicial ‘Driving School‘ I admit!

Later, when a knowledgeable peer of mine came up to me in the playground and told me that you needed to use the pedals to be driving ‘properly,’ I was horrified.

I had been under the impression that you just turned the key in the ignition and gripped the steering wheel, and off you went, somehow. I had been too enamoured with the concept to actually consider the technicalities. I became even more determined, upon hearing this revelation, to be able to do the job properly.

My driving career began on my seventeenth birthday, in driving rain, on a seldom-used road on the Belfast Harbour Estate. My supervisor was my mother, who was in a tetchy mood with me for refusing to go shopping with her immediately afterwards.

I had more important things on the agenda. Here it is:

12.00pm: Stall car. Get annoyed.

12.01pm: Stall car again. Curse car to heavens.

12.02pm: Stall for a third time. Mutter that there must be something wrong with the clutch.

12.03pm: Lurch off with excessive engine revs. Scare wits out of mother and sister.

12.05pm: Try out the novelties of reverse gear.

12.06pm: Get fed up. Go home and watch Monaco Grand Prix.

(In the event, Michael Schumacher retired from the lead with suspension failure. David Coulthard took the victory. I was delighted).

Unfortunately, as we all know, once your provisional license has arrived in the post, it’s then on to the tedious business of actually being educated in the ways of the road.

This is the tricky bit.

My first lesson was with a bald gentleman with a rather high voice, who was a personable type of chap, but whom I hated anyway. He spent ten minutes scaring me with talk of roundabouts, then commanded to start the engine and drive off!

In my initial lessons I had trouble with the concept of changing from second into third gear, and liked driving so close to parked cars that the bald gentleman would occasionally scream and grab the steering wheel. This was one of the only moments of my auto-education that I enjoyed.

When I was getting used to his purple, non-turbo diesel Corsa, the git sold it and bought a torque-less, petrol-powered, Peugeot 306 instead. I now had to perform perfect starts in a gutless vehicle, time after time, without either kangarooing myself and the bald gentleman through the windscreen or stalling the engine. The pressure was on.

After one particularly pointless lesson, which involved me driving up and down a dual carriageway in the sleet and practicing precisely no manoeuvres, I decided that I would take my practical test without telling my squeakily-spoken instructor.

Needless to say, I failed. I was forced to confess my sins. After he had forgiven me, we rebooked another test and he agreed to give me a ‘refresher.’

For reasons not even known to myself I elected to select reverse gear instead of fourth while accelerating down a hill. The noise was not conducive to peace of mind twelve hours before a driving test.

I told myself that I would never pass, and that I must accept my fate of sitting on public transport with smelly, anoraked oddballs for the rest of my days.

The next day, despite nearly flattening a cyclist, I passed at my second attempt. God only knows how. Perhaps the instructor got that brown envelope full of cash after all.

Author: Richard Craig

In this day and age, when image is everything, certain individuals may be keen to cultivate an ‘anti-image’ to stick two fingers up to the generations of Ugg-boot wearing, Mini Cooper-driving hordes.

And there is no better place to start nurturing your anti-herd credentials than the ‘Bargain Buys’ section of your local Autotrader.

With the government’s scrappage scheme now well under way and doing its best to remove anything remotely interesting from the UK’s roads and driveways, timing is imperative as supplies of these gems become even poorer.

So often, the sentimental or style value of these vehicles will greatly override such a trivial matter as their monetary value (pah), meaning that you can pay a piddling sum in exchange for many months, or even years’ worth, of admiring glances.

Not only that, the keen motorist will also discover the happy side effect, before long, of owning a car built before the EU started thumping its safety bible, when a car that weighed anything approaching a ton would have been advised to lay off the Four Star by its dietician.

Even cars that were rather pedestrian in their day, by comparison with today’s corpulent machinery, are like Formula One cars to drive. My most recent car was a one-litre Rover Metro, purchased from an eighty-five year old woman, with the horsepower of a carpet louse.

However, because it also weighed about as much, it was fantastic fun to drive. Corners approached at unnecessary haste were dealt with by no greater expedient than simply turning the steering wheel. When I drove a modern Vauxhall Astra Sporthatch, which is by all accounts a ‘drivers car’ the next day, it was like climbing from a motorised roller-skate into an articulated lorry. That little Metro went, or at least, it felt as if it did.

This is another aspect of owning a more mature motor – thanks to much lower levels of soundproofing and, in most cases, a more unrefined ride, old cars feel as if they are travelling at a much greater speed than they actually are, as in the case of a go-kart.

I like to think of this curious quality as a sort of inadvertent safety feature (although the actual safety features aren’t worth thinking about most of the time).

One further credential that the lucky owner will be able to wave in the face of all the organic sandal-wearers who say that old cars cough out planet-poisoning fumes, is thus:

A survey by Toyota in 2004 found that up to 28% of a car’s carbon footprint (at least four toes‘ worth) is created during its manufacture and initial delivery to the customer.

So, if you’re driving an old wreck that only gets thirty miles to the gallon, as opposed to ordering  some brand new, super-slick corporate-mobile that gets a smug forty, you are still better off on the environment front, which will keep Al Gore happy.

And lastly, even the sort of beardy, jazz-loving oddball (like the author) that drives such cars is not immune to the occasional attack of vanity. When I was waiting for a bus outside college the other day, an ancient Ford Fiesta, one at least twenty-five years old, burbled past, and everyone, without fail, at the bus stop gawped at it. So there you go!

One thing’s for sure, it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than an Audi TT.

Author: Richard Craig