Car hire, it's finally happened. - Page 2

I finally wrote it! (All 11 parts!)

Here is the link to my car hire guide 

A Handy Guide to Hiring a Car - 1) Introduction

Hope it helps

Great advice , I hope people read it 

Dave 

Thank you for the feedback Dave

Thank you for taking the time to write, it I do exactly the things you wrote down , I believe if you just take your time all will be fine , I personally now go with wiber which is off airport 2 mins away. And so far they have been excellent the 4 times we have used them 🤞and also take our the excess car hire insurance in UK , thanks again 

Hello Kenbo

Sorry to hear of your bad dealings with the renta car company. Unfortunately you are not the only one but you have got off lightly compared to others. 

My advice to you and all who read this post is to give Coys Cars a try. They have an office in Torrevieja and also in Alicante airport. I have used them for many years now and can not fault them. Very honest and professional. I can not recommend them enough. They also have a large customer data base of returning customers who are happy with their service  you can not say that about many renta car companies  

Give them a try and you will never look back. 

Pay their insurance no hassle simples. 

Thank you all for your comments.

Handyman, well done to you for providing a very helpful piece of work.

I have a further question, it appears that the check in guy at Centauro kept our paperwork that we were given when we picked the car up, how vital is this to the process ? Ordinarily I always keep this for a couple of weeks in case of spurious late damage found.

I have found and printed lots of paperwork in my Centauro account but I am not sure if any of it matches our original paperwork on arrival.

If not is it possible to obtain a copy from anywhere? 

@Kenbo - thank you for your kind words.

It is a common trick these days for hire companies to 'swap' your paperwork or retain your documents, although I am not directly pointing the finger at Centauro as I have no bad experience with them in this regard.

What I do is take a photo with my phone of any papers I am handing back or which are being taken off me. The handler should have no problem with you doing this unless of course, they have something to hide. Sometimes things get lost in translation of course, which is my point about staying calm!

I would recommend you keep all paperwork or copies until your full deposit amount has been refunded to you, then you at least know there are no surprises.

Hope that helps

@RichardH - Your comment is correct, but as far as value for money goes... I can only disagree.

An example I have is that in the early days of my vehicle hire I could get a medium sized car for around 120€ for the week. With their insurance, I was paying just over 300€ for the week. I also had a case of hiring a car for 8 cents per day, just over 1€ for the two-week trip... but in excess of 250€ when you add in the insurance!

Bare bones rental will be the lowest cost you can achieve, remember, actual insurance (for crashes and third party etc) is included with ALL car hire), CDW is the part that covers you for scrapes and scams basically!

You can get annual, European CDW cover for about £40 per year and you are dealing with a UK based organisation, which overcomes language and culture barriers as well as being covered by UK consumer law.

I know the CDW cover with doyouspain pushes up the overall hire cost, however you need to decide which offers you the most value? The cost per hire with DYS or annual cover for a fixed fee with a UK based organisation?

And that is exactly what I usually do but I suppose when something out of the ordinary happens like inspecting the highlighted damage then your concentration is elsewhere.

I have to say here that I am very surprised at Centauro based upon many successful rentals previously, I wouldn't usually have them in the Goldcar/Dickmanns league, they have done themselves a huge disservice.