Basic rules for car rental. Knowing them will help you save time, money and nerves.
Everyone spends their vacation differently. Some strategically limit their travels to a well-trodden route from the beach to the hotel bar, while others are ready to cover a couple of thousand kilometers in a week.
Experienced travelers know that renting a car is often one of the best ways to try out a country. True, it is not without its pitfalls. In anticipation of the holiday season, we have prepared several simple tips to minimize the risks when renting a car in another country.
Choosing a rental company
Choosing a rental company is both simple and difficult. The easiest way to compare rental prices is to use large travel sites and aggregators. As a rule, you can also find the average rental company rating, compiled from customer reviews, on them.
However, you should not blindly rely on a high rating from a well-known brand. Most large networks with world-famous names use a franchise system. Therefore, if you were once served excellently in the German office of the hypothetical company Best Cars Ever, you should not lose your vigilance when renting from the same Best Cars Ever in Sicily. It is better to read user reviews for a specific region.
Subtleties of pricing
In pursuit of beautiful price tags, rental companies come up with a lot of clever tricks. So the real price often differs from the stated one.
One of the standard schemes is all sorts of tricks with fuel. In the West, as a rule, you get a car with a full tank and must return it with a full one too. If you do not come across a gas station on the way to return the car (and this can easily happen if you rented a car in the center of a large city), then you will have to pay. Of course, with a hefty markup, the size of which depends only on the personal modesty of the rental owner.
In the East, there is a different approach: you are given a car with a tank at the bottom of which a couple of sad drops of fuel roll, enough only to make it to the nearest gas station. You must return the car with an empty tank, but it is difficult to calculate exactly. So, most likely, in the end you will give the owner of the rental or his employees a few liters of gasoline. A trifle, but unpleasant.
Some rental companies charge extra money for mileage “above the norm,” returning the car in another place, crossing state borders (including in Europe, where there are practically no borders). All these details should be clarified in advance and included in the calculation. Perhaps, after introducing all the “correction factors,” the most advantageous offer will turn out to be not advantageous at all.
In the US, many rental companies do not include insurance in the calculated price at all (we are not talking about taxes - they are always calculated here only at the time of final payment). And this is not nonsense: the insurance fee can be comparable or even exceed the rent itself.
This terrible insurance
By the way, about insurance. Choosing the right insurance is a very important part. In most cases, the rental company includes in the price only basic civil liability insurance and car damage insurance with an unconditional deductible - for example, a thousand dollars.
If the repair after an accident costs two thousand - you will pay half. However, you will hardly be able to influence the calculation of the damage, at that moment you will most likely already be at home. Basic insurance usually does not include damage to glass, tires, roof and underbody of the car and has a lot of other exclusions printed in small print.
The rental company will most likely offer you to pay extra money and exclude the deductible from the insurance. Do not rush to do this. Firstly, the extra payment will be significant, sometimes more expensive than the rental itself. Secondly, this "full" insurance again may not include certain damages - tires, glass, and so on.
Usually, for deductible insurance, it is more profitable to use the services of specialized insurers, which are easy to find on Google by searching for "Car Hire Excess Insurance". You will pay several times less, but you will get much better coverage - up to such exotic things as Road Rage Cover (if you are hit by another participant in an accident, you will receive compensation).
Cards and money
There is only one advantage of "full" insurance through a rental company. When you make a rental, a fairly decent amount (deductible plus rental cost) will not be blocked on your bank card. However, this is not a fact. Some companies even manage to freeze the maximum on the client's card in such cases, "with a reserve".
If nothing bad happened to the car, then the blocked amount should be returned to your account. However, the return process often takes tens of days, so it is more profitable to use a credit card with a long grace period (also known as a "grace period").
By the way, about cards. When receiving a car, in addition to the main credit card, it is better to have a spare card with the required amount (including the deductible). Banks like to unexpectedly reject foreign transactions under the pretext of "concern for safety". At the same time, they may not even be embarrassed by the fact that you have already managed to make 150 other purchases in a foreign country.
