Car Rental Question

The Witches Cat

Hi

I am going to Milan in September and want to rent a car for 3 days. Never rented a car before and was hoping that someone could clear up some questions i have.

I dont own or use a Credit Card! Can i still rent a car?

Is it true that if you take out the Car rental company top insurance that you dont pay a deposit or have a freeze put on any card?

Do i go online to the country where i am renting to book car or do i do it through a rental company in Ireland?

Any info much appreciated.

Thanks

acronym Chilli

Regarding credit card, you should be ok these days with most rental companies so long as you have a debit card (and enough funds on the account for them to pre-authorise a spend of the rental fee plus a security deposit, could be a few hundred more). If you've not credit/debit card, then I doubt you can rent anywhere.

If you take the top insurance they may reduce the freeze/authorisation on your card. However they're still likely to block money for the situation where you don't refuel the car. (they may also justify it based on the possibility that you violate the insurance: e.g. damage the car by driving off-road or similar, no insurance policy is a complete carte blanche).

You start wherever you like in terms of sites. The Irish sites should work, and will offer you prices in euro. I've also found autoeurope https://www.autoeurope.co.uk/ good as a starter comparison website. Sometimes you'll get a better deal then making the booking direct on the rental company's site (or sometimes the comparison site really has the very best deal). There are other ones too (google is your friend). Note that when autoeurope offers you extra insurance, it's in fact a car rental excess insurance (so you'd pay the damage, and then reclaim it from autoeurope), which is a different kind of peace of mind to a full cover from the rental company.

Finally, worth searching on forums for the city/airport to which you're travelling and "car rental". I think it was in Faro that I got a very good recommendation for a smaller local company. Guys who are going there every winter for golf, or with holiday homes there, swore by it. Prices were good, pick-up/drop-off was very straight-forward, and no sharp practice. However they were definitely not as slick with website/desk etc., as the big guys. On the other hand, if you were there more often you could build a relationship.

Equally, sometimes even a normally good brand can be not so good in a different airport if the local franchisee isn't running it well. However, generally the biggest players are reliable enough (Hertz, Avis, Europcar). However, you'll find some bad stories about just about every company and every airport, so don't go too far down the rabbit hole.

Finally: if you take the full insurance, make sure it's really full. Some will still exclude some easy-to-damage things like roof, undertray, wing mirrors, interior, etc., Some really are all-but full protection, so you don't even need to check the car before driving off except for basic safety checks (tyres, lights, wipers, spare-tyre/repair kit). I'm not specifically recommending Hertz, as they may have changed their insurance in last several years, but I took full insurance from them once in France and the guy at the desk basically said that so long as I brought back the keys I was in the clear (at the same time, I think losing keys was specifically excluded from cover)

Have a great trip!

GAAcailin

Also, check the fuel policy. Make sure it it Full-> Full and not Full -> Empty; we made this mistake once and basically you are paying for a full tank of petrol up front at a highly inflated price, It happened to us in Malaga in Spain where we were just driving to a resort not far away and picking up a few messages in the supermarket. There was literally no way to use up a tank of fuel and we (reluctantly) handed back the car half full.

When you leave the airport look out for filling stations near the airport that you can potentially fill-up on return; the one in the airport is usually on the dearer side.