Shortage of car hire vehicles predicted for September 2009

Shortages of car hire vehicles in the main European hot spots have been very much in the public eye in the summer of 2009. It looks like this will continue into September as well.

There was an article in yesterday’s UK Observer (30th August 09) by Harriet Meyer entitled “Keeping a cool head as cutbacks turn up the heat on holiday car hire” saying that there will be a shortage of hire cars in European hotspots and steep price rises may cause problems for travellers into September.

This appears to be very much the pattern of the summer so far, as we have been highlighting on the insurance4carrental.com site and our car hire excess insurance blog site. Back in July we reported the story of two people who are regular visitors to the south of France who could not rent a car at Nice. In the end through a friend of a friend they rented a car body work repair shop’s courtesy car.

In August we highlighted the situation in southern Europe, particularly Spain and Portugal and on both occasions advised travellers to book their car hire vehicles early. The Observer’s article was giving the same advice.

More information here

How to save money when you hire a car

Although the main summer season is drawing to a close and the 2009 car rental shortages ending, people rent cars throughout the year and there are ways to cut costs when you rent a car. Normally when you hire a car the vehicle will come with a full tank of fuel. Under the hire agreement in most cases you will find that you have to return the car with a full tank or the car hire company will re-fuel the vehicle, but will usually make an administrative charge for doing this.

This of course is understandable as it is going to take time taking the car to a petrol filling station, even if it is only a hundred metres away from their car hire depot.
If the car has been returned full it can be efficiently checked over, cleaned and be ready for the next customer and with shortages of car hire vehicles in July and August 2009 in many parts of Europe this has been most important.

There are a few car hire companies that actually encourage a renter to return the car empty, so they can automatically charge the customer an administration fee.
So always check the situation out when you are signing up the car hire documentation at the check in desk and then you can save money.

When you do fill up with petrol or diesel, remember to keep the receipt so you can show it to the car hire return check in staff if asked. There have been cases whereby renters have added water to make the tank full, or bought diesel instead of unleaded petrol. The majority of rental vehicles have stickers on the outside of the fuel cap area and inside the area as well.

Another way to save money when renting a hire car is to buy your car hire excess insurance from a specialist insurance provider. Their daily policies are normally a lot cheaper than those provided as an additional cost onto the car rental by the car hire company. The reason is fairly straightforward they add a higher profit margin on. The website http://www.insurance4carrental.com/ acts as an introducer advertising service for a couple of providers and you can buy daily car hire excess policies or an even better idea is the annual policy.

If you have any further tips please let us know via this blog.

Insurance4carhire.com raises funds for charities in 2009

Insurance4carhire.com is an online insurance company providing car rental excess insurance, a low cost alternative to the expensive Excess Waiver charges offered by car rental companies and are valid for car hire in Europe, the US/Canada and Worldwide. Not only is the company adept at helping people save money, they are also involved in delivering real projects that make a difference to people's lives.

The company has been working with their customers and colleagues to raise funds for specific projects at four great charities which touch the lives of most people. As part of the Towergate Group, Insurance4carhire.com is supporting Towergate's four nominated charities - the Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity, Help the Hospices, Childline and Cancer Research UK.

The Towergate Charitable Foundation (www.towergate.org.uk) ensures that funds are channeled to specific charitable projects, all of which are supported by donations from Insurance4carhire.com. See www.towergate.org.uk for details. For Cancer Research UK, Insurance4carhire.com help pay for Professor Adrian Harris world leading molecular medicine project at Cancer Research UK's Oxford Research centre. For Childline, Insurance4carhire.com are helping to pay to train volunteer staff at 11 call centres across UK so that all of the 4,500 children who call each day can receive help.

The financial contribution at the Great Ormond Street Hospital is effectively paying to build two isolation units in the new Cardiac & Respiratory wing which will cut post operation infection. At
Help the Hospices, they are contributing towards paying for 17 Scholarships for senior Hospice staff to take a Masters in Hospice leadership at £5k each. They are also providing £50k to an Innovations Grant Fund that will provide grants to local hospices who wish to test innovative fund raising schemes but do not have all the launch money needed.

Insurance4carhire.com invites its customers to make a difference to the community today by adding a charity donation of just £1 to their insurance payment. Not only can consumers save in this economic climate, they can continue to support charities and those less fortunate by choosing Insurance4carhire.com.

Low Car Hire Insurance

Car hire insurance is a must have when renting a vehicle regardless of where you are located in the world. Most insurance companies are offering car hire insurance cover nowadays and it is even easy for one to buy this insurance cover online. With most of the major insurers competing for a share of the internet market, one can easily get very reasonable rates on car hire insurance if they take their time to compare prices before buying. Still, some insurance companies have partnered with car hire companies to offer discounted rates on car hire insurance. It is now possible to get very fair rates on day to day car hire plans. This adds to the many options of choosing the most convenient insurance plan when hiring a car. Other than the daily packages, there are other covers suitable for weekly, monthly, annual, periodical and long-term hire.

Frequent travelers will definitely find the car hire excess insurance both valuable and economic. Under this insurance package, you do not pay extra charges for any damages that the car may suffer during the period you hired it as it is all covered in the initial price. It covers all the extras which you may be required to pay such that you are not charged for damages in the event of a minor accident. You can also take advantage of car hire excess waivers which are designed to make the service friendlier. Waivers can minimize the excesses you need to pay, sometimes up to zero levels. Different companies offer different rates on waivers so it is wise to do some searching before settling for one particular insurer to ensure that they get the best deals. It can be quite expensive to buy this type of insurance package from car hire companies. The best way to get cheaper rates would be by buying through insurance companies which specialize in offering the same.

There are several other factors to consider when choosing car hire insurance policies. Some of the general things to look out for include the credibility of the insurer and the rates at which you are buying the cover. Insurance is costly and it is therefore always good to do some comparison so that you get the fairest deals you can lay your hands on. You should also consider the regional coverage of the cover more so if you intend to cross the continent. The company you choose to buy your car hire cover from should in this case have a worldwide presence so that the service becomes convenient and cheaper for you.

The third party cover, collision damage and theft protection aspects of car hire insurance that one also needs to bear in mind. In most countries, it is mandatory that insurers provide these three covers even on hired cars. Some crafty insurers have a way of twisting around this so that you get to pay for damages incurred in case of an accident. A good car hire insurance cover should take care of this.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/insurance-articles/low-car-hire-insurance-939166.html

About the Author: For more information please check out the resource site Car Hire Insurance and its partner site Car Hire Excess Insurance

Shortage of Car hire vehicles in Spain

Simon Calder The Independent’s travel writer reported in the 8th August that there is a shortgage in Spain this summer. He told the story of a Mr Carl Whitaker who had booked “a pay on arrival” car with “DoYouSpain.com” and was contacted a couple of days before he was due to arrive in Palma Airport in Mallorca that no vehicle was available.

You don’t have to pay till you arrive, can cancel without penalty and according to their website “DoYouSpain.com is a company dedicated to providing you with efficient low-cost car hire services in Spain. We take pride in offering reliable and flexible services with our All Inclusive Price Policy with No hidden costs or last minute surprises.” Checking their conditions on the web, their was no reference to them cancelling, however I would presume further terms conditions would appear when a customer makes a booking.

Apparently Mr Whitaker tracked down an alternative car and the Renault Clio that was available would cost £843. In his original booking it was going to be £197.

Simon went onto check other popular Spanish airports for a weeks rental and also Faro airport in the Algarve, Portugal. He found a VW Golf at £751 which is around £100 a day and his research discovered no vehicles at Faro, Ibiza or Mahón in Menorca. At Málaga you get a VW Polo for £472 for the week.

In July in a headline in the jmlvillas.com group’s cotedazurrental.com “Travel News” There was the story link for “Book your car hire early this summer - you might not get one at the last minute” reporting on a shortgage of cars at Nice airport in the south of France. Using Holiday Autos for a search I found cars in Alicante. Spain for a rental starting on the 12th August “ there was no problem, however who knows in a few days time they could be just as busy, so whenever possible try and book well in advance, particularly in the height of the summer”.


Back in October on the main jmlvillas.com main site In “Tips and Topics In Ireland 2008 onwards” there was a report about “car dealers are facing increased congestion on their forecourts. as a large number of Self drive car rental hire cars are returning to their forecourts to be sold/ 18.712 hire car vehicles were supplied to date in 2008 and the cars are being returned to be sold as "used cars. Apparently there are not so many hire cars in Ireland this year and on my visits to Ireland have seen several cars out on the roads that are operated by car rental that had 2008 and even 2007 registrations.

August is probably one of the busiest periods for car hire companies and if the economic situation improves next year then hopefully the car hire operators will have more stock again, however in the short term as Simon Calder points out in his article “Rental companies are making a mint from the hole in the hire-car market”.

Try and book in advance whenever possible, arrange your booking, arrange your car hire excess insurance in advance and have a stressful trip.

It is early August are you off on holiday? Got your car hire arranged?

4th August 2009 - We are in the height of the summer holiday season, but the weather is not too hot in the south of England today around 19 degrees and it is raining.

If you are starting your holiday later this week and are renting a car, do make sure you have taken out car hire excess insurance in advance. Car hire rental excess insurance is something that you may chose to ignore completely – particularly if you happen to like large and unpleasant financial shocks.

Such shocks are a very real possibility when hiring a car. That’s because the insurance provided by the hire company will, in all likelihood, contain a critical limitation. Buried somewhere in the small print will probably be a clause to the effect that the policy contains ‘excess’ and the excess is usually stated to be a financial amount between GBP £500 and GBP£1500!!

What you may be liable for:

If you have an accident that results in a claim then you will have to make a mandatory contribution to the cost – in other words the ‘excess amount’ that is sometimes also called the ‘first part’ of any claim. So if the policy excess is defined in the hire agreement to be £750 and you have an accident resulting in GBP£500’ worth of damage to the rented car, you should expect to see a charge to your credit card of the GBP£500 because it is below the policy’s stated excess. Should the damage be assessed at GBP£1500, you will get a charge to your credit card for the full £750 excess.

What is the best solution -

Take out a daily excess or annual excess policy. You can even take out one for family and partners and age group 75 -85.

Our website insurance4carrental.com is full of information, articles and links to well known providers like insurance4carhire.com and Questor. We do not sell the these products, just act as introducers under the terms of the UK FSA regulations.

So if you are off on holiday later this week, later this month or next month, arrange the car hire excess today. You don't want to leave that till the last minute.

If you are taking a holiday in the UK in the next few days, if you rent a convertable, make sure the roof closes it ok, it lookws like there is going to be a fair amount of rain about.