Car hire instead of buying

bennyc

Not sure if this is the right place but has anyone gone down the route of car hire instead of buying.
Here is my situation,
We have two cars at the house and my son is insured under my name, cost of my insurance with him is 2500 due to a claim against my son on my policy so we were hit on the double with loss of NCB. At present to get him on his own policy the best I can find for him is 3200 on a 06 1.1 corsa, bearing in mind the car will be around 1500 -2K then we can say 5K. We can half manage with my wife's car and mine between the three of us for the summer but come sept we will need to be looking at options. For the next couple of weeks I needed to get something sorted so I managed to rent a car (Fiesta, Clio, Polo) for 95e for a fortnight. I know this will go up come July but I would expect the same price again in Sept.
So basically rather than 5K to get the young lad for the year I could potentially hire a car for 44 weeks of the year for 50 -70 quid 2200 - 3080. I know there will be a lot if hassle as I am in the west and the best prices are usually Dublin airport but I can handle that. Its hard to not look at this as an option as with hire there are zero running costs bar fuel and maybe excess insurance which is only 50 a year.

Interested in peoples opinions.

Nuw

Given the prices of owning a car (insurance/tax/maintenance) these days, car hire makes a lot of sense for a lot of people. In your particular situation however, you also have to take in account the fact that your son won't be building his own no claim bonus, apart from that it seems you've covered your basis and your reasoning makes sense.

Might be interesting to look at: linky

cruizer101

Are you sure your son will be able to drive the rental car. There tends to be restrictions or extra to pay at any rate for younger drivers.

I think it can be a good option though.

bazz26

I don't think car hire companies do long term rental here, I think they max they will rent a car is 30 days max at a time so your son would have to renew each time at the end of that term. Also many rental companies will insist on the driver holding a full license for at least 2 years and/or you need to be at least 21 years old. Again these restrictions may vary from one rental company to another.

Another thing to consider is that at some stage he will eventually have to get a policy in his own name to build up his No Claims Bonus, this means insurance inevitably will be expensive at some point

mloc123

I worked with a German guy that when he moved over was so shocked at the cost of cars/ownership here and decided to rent instead. He rented for a month at a time going with the cheapest price he got from some of the online search tools.

The only pain was having to drive to the airport each month to return and pick up a new car. Cost on average 250-300e/month IIRC

grogi

mloc123 wrote: »

I worked with a German guy that when he moved over was so shocked at the cost of cars/ownership here and decided to rent instead. He rented for a month at a time going with the cheapest price he got from some of the online search tools.

The only pain was having to drive to the airport each month to return and pick up a new car. Cost on average 250-300e/month IIRC

You can do that, but you will not get that price during holiday season.

mossy50

how about a leasing company fleet line or northgate

mloc123

mossy50 wrote: »

how about a leasing company fleet line or northgate

but if you lease a car you still need to have your own insurance policy?

bazz26

I don't think there is any company offering personal car leasing in Ireland.

Really Interested

I live in city centre, I am a www.gocar.ie member used for short trips, there is a Hertz office near my apartment that is used for any long trips. It works very well for me in my opinion anything upto 5-10 days a month is ok, more than 15ish would have to do the maths.

Really Interested

bazz26 wrote: »

I don't think there is any company offering personal car leasing in Ireland.

I think Enterprise do some long term solutions but it has been ages since I used them.

bennyc

just to clarify I will drive the rental while my son drives my car, the way insurance has gone for starter drivers some companies (AXA for one i think ) will discount young drivers based on named experience, I know a 22 y/o who was allowed a 4 year ncb based on being named with FBD for the same period. So a new car was 1200 last month.
My son had an accident 13 months ago and is getting quotes from a broker based on 1 year claim free driving so I dont think its make a massive difference at the early stages.
As for rental v lease the main saving is the insurance as to lease would mean my son would have to get full cover on my Vectra for 4500.
As for best price I find Ryanair or Kayak and the likes are always cheaper than going to enterprise directly, I have a good bit of experience in car hire so know how to avoid / anticipate most hidden costs.

Esel

If your son is a named driver on your policy, but in fact is the main driver, that may well void your insurance.

bennyc

Esel wrote: »

If your son is a named driver on your policy, but in fact is the main driver, that may well void your insurance.

I would say most family cars could be like that, one half buys a car and other half buys the banger, the main car is upgraded and the the old good car is demoted to the run around , usually ownership will only go to whoever is getting rid of the run around. So basically wife drives the new car husband drives the 10 year old, wife gets a new car and uses the run around as trade or trade in scrape deal, new car in husbands name and wife drives it. I doubt there is any query over who is the main driver once a named driver is on a policy.

bazz26

Spouses driving each other's cars is not the same thing with insurance companies. Both married partners have an insurable interest in the car and would incur a loss if the car were damaged/stolen or destroyed. Insuring a car where the main driver(non spouse) isn't the policy holder is different and known as "fronting" in insurance circles. It's basically acquiring lower cost cover through false pretenses.

grogi

bazz26 wrote: »

Spouses driving each other's cars is not the same thing with insurance companies. Both married partners have an insurable interest in the car and would incur a loss if the car were damaged/stolen or destroyed. Insuring a car where the main driver(non spouse) isn't the policy holder is different and known as "fronting" in insurance circles. It's basically acquiring lower cost cover through false pretenses.

When talking about TPL policies, the driver always has insurable interest regardless who the car belong to!

cruizer101

bazz26 wrote: »

Spouses driving each other's cars is not the same thing with insurance companies. Both married partners have an insurable interest in the car and would incur a loss if the car were damaged/stolen or destroyed. Insuring a car where the main driver(non spouse) isn't the policy holder is different and known as "fronting" in insurance circles. It's basically acquiring lower cost cover through false pretenses.

It is but to be fair the insurance companies don't offer any solution. What if multiple people want to drive the same car they can't all take out policies on it and yet one have to be the main driver even though they may all drive it equally.

bazz26

I'm not defending insurance companies, I looked into getting a weekend car for myself while using my existing car as the daily driver and couldn't use my NCB on a second car.

But one of the reasons that everyone is being punished now is because the system was abused for years. Young lads getting their parents to insure powerful cars with them down as a named driver while the parents never drove it or insuring a Micra or Yaris while actually driving powerful cars through the "driving of other cars" cover under their own policies. We have become a nanny state as far as insurance is concerned.