Car rental (eg. for holiday or for traveling to home) is often the most convenient and most cost-effective solution. When you are looking for car rental companies, you can often see cars brokerage sites (eg. Rentalcars.com).
There is a difference between local car rental companies and brokers who work with a number of car rental.
Local car rental companies
The car rental providers are independent companies who have their own fleet. You can call them or view their website and you can deal directly with the company. Local companies have several advantages, from the personalized service to a flexible car pick up and drop off time.
If you are using the local car rental companies, you could learn everything about the company before you make a booking.
- Do it provide an airport shuttle to the car, hotel?
- What kind of car categories you can choose from?
- How much will be the expected rental cost?
- What is the fuel policy of the car rental company?
Depending on the selected local car rental company, there are various insurance policies. In general, the insurance included in the price, but pay attention to choose a company that offers the best coverage that is possible. This is an added convenience that can save you from having to pay an astronomical amount if the car will be stolen or involved in an accident.
In addition, one advantage of local car rental companies is that there are no hidden costs, no booking fees, no unexpected extras that you least expect. Pay attention to the kilometer restriction because it can easily increase the price (most companies offer unlimited kilometers in inland).
Finally, the last benefit is that you can pay the entire rental cost at the pick-up time (you don’t need to transfer the money in advance), which is always an advantage if you can see the booked vehicle.
Car rental brokerages
When you are looking for car rental companies, you can meet a number of brokerage companies. In some cases, you don’t really realize that they are brokers. The brokers don’t have own company, but business with the local car rental companies in order to provide to the customers a wide selection. This means that they don’t know where the car comes from and how well maintained and serviced.
Some things they never advertise or try to keep secret:
– Insurance: you can’t found a clear, unambiguous insurance policy If you do, check it on the Terms of Service page too. If the price includes full insurance, why do they offer additional insurance?
– Complicated insurance procedure: if an accident occurs, the repair costs you have to pay to the car rental company. Next come the police reports, part invoices, etc. In order to you have to pay more and more.
– You have to pay attention because in many places they want that you pay one tank of fuel forward. You are not obligated to do this, or at least not on their fuel prices.
– Wide range of vehicle types. Let’s look carefully at the categories they offer. You can’t compare a VW Golf or Ford Focus with a Hyundai Accent type. The difference in the rental price will be much higher in groups.
– Check the prices of additional equipment. The brokers often ask an outrageous amount for child seat or GPS or an off-hours pick-up, drop-off.
The brokers work for commission and often count booking fee, which also gives hidden cost to the price. While it may be that in some cases they are cheaper than local car rental companies when you begin to add the hidden costs to the fee offered by them, soon you will see that actually you have to pay more than expected.
