Car Hire Spain Summer 2016

Rashers72

Looking for a car out of Barcelona el Prat airport for 11 days July
Mid size, mondeo size. However, I am getting prices of around EUR500. Was only expecting to pay about EUR300.
Any recommendations for a better deal?

Lima Golf

Rashers72 wrote: »

Looking for a car out of Barcelona el Prat airport for 11 days July
Mid size, mondeo size. However, I am getting prices of around EUR500. Was only expecting to pay about EUR300.
Any recommendations for a better deal?

Try http://m.doyouspain.com/default_toua01m16a_1.aspx?gclid=CLHJsJCFrcoCFSaD2wodIJwMxg
Just make sure to filter your results by fuel policy full to full or you'll be hit with massive fuel charges at the desk. I also filter by at airport locations just for convenience

peckerhead

+1 for Doyouspain and for the 2 tips above. I just rented a Renault Clio out of Malaga for 6 days for about €27 (I have an annual CDW policy for €50 from carhireexcess.com) and with a full/full fuel policy. Recordgo was the name of the actual rental company.

Rashers72

Thanks. I should have mentioned that as I never heard of some of the companies I googled them. There were a lot of very negative posts on Tripadvisor about additional charges after people came home/very poor customer service / very specific fuel usage (incl. auto charging for full tank regardless of use) / very high mileage cars/ downgrades due to non availability/extra admin charges etc. with the following: Firefly/Solmar/Goldcar/Inter rent. While just like Ireland I would expect the odd story there is simply so many of these posts on such a regular basis I cannot ignore. There are no such stories for the big name rental agencies, but even on that web site the prices are really high for those companies. Any thoughts?

Eponymous

Rashers72 wrote: »

Thanks. I should have mentioned that as I never heard of some of the companies I googled them. There were a lot of very negative posts on Tripadvisor about additional charges after people came home/very poor customer service / very specific fuel usage (incl. auto charging for full tank regardless of use) / very high mileage cars/ downgrades due to non availability/extra admin charges etc. with the following: Firefly/Solmar/Goldcar/Inter rent. While just like Ireland I would expect the odd story there is simply so many of these posts on such a regular basis I cannot ignore. There are no such stories for the big name rental agencies, but even on that web site the prices are really high for those companies. Any thoughts?

AVOID Goldcar and Firefly anyway. I've no idea bout the other two you've mentioned but I've heard horror stories about Firefly in Malaga airport and from Goldcar in Lanzarote in particular but most European holiday destinations in general.

No coincidence that both have been covered on BBC's Watchdog programme in recent years. They have decent prices usually and then hit you with a hard sell on insurance and confusing fuel policies which inevitably leave you getting hit for some form of charge - I've heard accounts of people paying a deposit for a full tank of fuel on the basis that if they return the car full it's refunded, only to have an admin charge levied on the refund rendering it worthless.

Rashers72

In the end, I used all my British Airways frequent flier miles (combined family miles from 2015), and booked a compact car with Avis. Brought a EUR550 cost down to EUR200. It's actually hard to get value back on BA air miles from Ireland, and they would have probably just expired, so a win win for me.