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What To Consider When Hiring A Car?

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Whether you are travelling on holiday or hiring a car during the course of a business trip, therefore, here are some tips for avoiding some of the worst of the rip-offs:


Terms Of Hire

  • It might sound obvious, but it is nonetheless important to read and to understand exactly what is being offered in any hire car booking you make.
  • That goes for the price of the rental package, the class of car that is to be provided, the extent of any insurance included with it, whether the fuel tank is empty when you collect and return the vehicle, and the period of grace you might be given on the deadline for the return of the car.


Insurance

  • Car hire insurance is a subject that gives cause for probably the most frequent complaints from customers.
  • It is not so much that an insurance package is typically included in the basic deal, but that additional hidden insurance costs risk increasing significantly the eventual price of hiring the vehicle.
  • The excess attached to the insurance, for example, is so high (up to £1,500 or more) that you might be persuaded to buy the excess insurance invariably offered by the rental company.
  • Charged at a daily rate that the majority of customers describe as expensive the cost of this cover results in a considerably increased premium for hiring your vehicle.
  • To make matters worse, the insurance cover provided by your car hire company frequently excludes damage to certain areas of the vehicle – such as the roof, underside, windows, wheels and tyre.
  • In fact, both these rip-offs – in terms of the cost and the limited cover offered – may be avoided by buying your hire car excess insurance from an entirely independent, specialist provider such as us here at Bettersafe.
  • Our cover involves payment of just a single premium which covers your excess for the whole of your hire period (up to a maximum of 60 days.


The Hire Car

  • You reasonably expect to get the car that you booked, but sometimes the rental company is unable to provide that particular model.
  • If the replacement vehicle involves an upgrade, it is unreasonable for the rental company to charge you any additional amount – but that may not stop their trying and you may have to stand your ground.


Fuel Policies

When choosing a rental company, you might also want to know their policy on fuel – whether it comes with a full tank of petrol and whether you need to return it full or empty.

It seems to be an increasingly widespread practice, for example, for companies to request the return of the vehicle with an empty tank – something which is practically impossible to achieve, of course, and which leaves you making a presentation to the company of the unused fuel.


Return Deadlines

  • Your contract of hire includes a deadline by which the car needs to be returned – if you exceed that deadline, the company is entitled to charge a further day’s hire.
  • In most cases, however, a period of grace is added to the strict deadline – and you might want to find out in advance just how long after the end of the hire period you may return the vehicle without incurring a further full day’s charge.
  • By keeping in mind some of these considerations when hiring your car, you might help to avoid adding your name to the already long list of complaining customers.