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Monday 25 April 2016

Several easy tips to avoid car hire rip-offs in Sunday 24 April 16 Sunday Irish Independent

Yesterday's Irish Independent ran a seasonal article about car hire rip offs. With bank holiday and main holiday seasons fast approaching it was time to remind readers that it is not all plain sailing when you hire a car.

There were fourteen issues in the check list :-  Book online,  Small print and hidden costs, Check the excess, Credit card and driving licence, Paperwork,
Size matters, Finding your way, Child seats, Emergencies, To fuel or not to fuel,
Mileage, Essential equipment, Parking and Inspect it.

These issue have been written about now on numerous occasions by journalists in British and Irish newspapers, Car hire excess insurance companies and on this site. They are all very important and easy to forget the moment you have arrived at your destination with a tired family or just tired yourself.

One item of note that no particular car hire excess insurance company was suggested in the article. Being an Irish newspaper article, I would have thought that Blue Insurance's carhireexcess.com was included. 

If you are looking for car hire excess waiver insurance products in Ireland visit this page at the insurance4carrental site   

Read the article here.

Monday 11 April 2016

More bad car hire experiences appear in last Saturday's Guardian

Car hire ‘super CDW’ cover: your policy should be to avoid this rip-off By Patrick Collinson was the headline in The Guardian on Saturday 9th April.


Once again there were warning on the problems of renting a car. It starts of saying "Rental companies are using ever more desperate tactics to force you into buying their wildly expensive “super CDW” insurance. The reason? Lots of people have woken up to this holiday rip-off and bought annual cover from the likes of icarhireinsurance or insurance4carhire instead. Nearly all the profit hire companies make comes from the extras, and when you don’t buy they get frantic."


First of all Patrick tells the story of his brother arriving at Glasgow airport with family. They had booked a large family car a Ford Galaxy. The company did not have such a vehicle and were offered a Citroen C3 Picasso which is about £10,000 cheaper on the market if you want to buy one.  Next came the hard sell on the excess insurance.


Although his brother had an annual car hire excess policy costing around £40 this was not good enough as the car hire company wanted to immediately debit £1,250 from his credit card. He did not have enough credit for this and refused to let his wife use her card. The only solution was that he had to pay £12.50 a day - the car hire company's price for their preferred insurance product.


This is so typical, however from personal experience, many car hire companies don't take the excess fee (£1,250 in this case) off your card them, they just want to be able to do it.


Patrick also pointed out that the policy you often buy from a car hire excess company, does not cover additional damage like tyres, under carriage, wheels and windscreens.


This blog has been around for many years now and together with the  insurance4carrental.com website we have featured so many similar reports like this.  Will it ever change? Read The Guardian article here