There are many benefits to taking cars on vacation. These could be rental cars, taxi’s or rideshare services. There are some good things to know before you pay too much or make some avoidable mistakes. Here are our car rental tips.
Car Rental
When booking a rental car there is a multitude of websites to use. We would generally look at Atlaschoice.com which is a comparison site. Enter all your details and they list the cheapest car hire and then you can check out the reviews for the car hire company and go from there.
When picking up the car ask the attendant to write down the return location. This will be helpful, especially if the return address is underground in a newly built Main Train Terminal that doesn’t exist in the outdated GPS map supplied. (Yes it happened to us).
Some companies are now offering portable Wi-Fi (LTE) at a per day cost. We have found these quite useful on the road, so if it is an optional extra think about how it will benefit you. If you are going out of Cellphone coverage zones it might be a waste of money, so do some research. Often the GPS will take you on a route it believes to be the fastest, but when you are in the ‘middle of nowhere’ that tiny dirt road is not necessarily where you want to go. There can be roadworks or road blockages, hence the benefit of Wi-Fi and Google Maps to help you re-route.
All car rental companies will offer an ‘option to reduce insurance excess’ should you get into an unfortunate situation. As an example, a $2000 excess can be reduced to $400 if you pay $40 per day for this privilege. Be sure to read the T&C’s of your Travel Insurance, whether it be through your Credit Card or with a third party provider like Covermore. We found out recently that certain travel insurance policies cover car accident excess, so you don’t need to take out the ‘option to reduce insurance excess’. Some credit card companies will also provide rental insurance when you pay using your credit card. So check before you book.
BAM! Cash saved!
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