I need to rent a car for our holiday to Italy and whilst I am aware of the excess insurance I can purchase in the UK for ~ £3 / day to cover the CDW excess I was wondering if there is anything I can do with regards to adding another driver. Thrifty want to charge 11 euros/day to add another driver to the rental agreement. Seems a bit pricey.

Car hire alone for a medium vehicle is > £250 for a week.

Tick, I’m interested in this

That seems a crazy expensive base price. Last couple of cars we’ve had in italy have been under £20 a day. Have you shopped around or is it weird requirement? We normally go through holiday autos, they act as an agent for local companies. Only issue we had one time was being charged an admin fee for a traffic offence we never committed. Hire co dug heels in but credit card company sorted it eventually.

I’m paying 170 quid for eight days from Verona airport. Renault Clio 4 door. I too have gone for separate excess insurance.

The child seat is my dilemma.

I can’t work out what Ryanair charge to take one with me. The price the rental companies charge is taking the pee!

Be very careful of using cheap car hire – its OK until things go wrong. Personally I would pay a bit extra to use a multinational company with a good reputation after having had a couple of hire care instances where things went wrong the big companies response is much better

Can’t help on the additional costs front but ugarizza, we took our car seat with Ryanair and it was free. We took our pram and car seat, the pram went as far as the plane before being put in the hold, the car seat was checked as oversize baggage. The only thing I would suggest is make sure you pack it well because it’ll probably be treated the same as any other baggage, in other words, just another thing to get shifted along asap.

AFAIK, most airlines will take a car seat and buggy free.

I’d echol the comments about making sure it packs ok. Some car seats have a removable back (for later conversion to booster) so if it is a collapsible one, do the collapsing and packing yourself. Otherwise, it could end up coming out on the conveyor belt in two pieces.

Check what their policy is on separate CDW.

Even though we had it, company in Tenerife still insisted on taking a €900 block on our debit card.

Since we had booked and paid through holiday autos already it wasn’t like we could tell them to stuff it.

Only way to compare is like for like. Cheaper options normally don’t hire at airports, go in winter etc. The headline price is to get you in its meaningless in reality

You can carry 2 items of baby equipment free of charge per child – 1 pushchair plus one of the following items: car seat or booster seat or travelcot.

https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/useful-info/help-centre/faq-overview/Travelling-with-children/Im-travelling-with-an-infant-is-there-anything-i-should-know

We’ve got one of these travel bags to put the car seat in, stops anything falling off and makes it really easy to see/find at the other end.

Even though we had it, company in Tenerife still insisted on taking a €900 block on our debit card.

That is normal, locally it’s now that unless you have a non fault and an admission with insurer ready to pay then you are still responsible for the damage until your cdw company pays up. In practice it’s sensible otherwise you have to read each policy in detail and check its still live before handing over the keys. There will also be exclusions on the cdw policy you are still liable for.

I’m pretty sure the 2 baby items (plus a small bag) is law, as every airline does it. FWIW, we’ve bought a cheap carseat for flights, if it gets smashed up its not the end of the world, we’ll just buy another. A £40 halfords seat is less than the cost of a single week’s rental

I can’t offer a tip for an extra driver, but google maps offers offline mapping – download the area you’ll drive around before you leave and use your phone as a GPS for the whole trip. additionally, shop around, travelsupermarket and Kayak may be able to beat the price you have for the car.

That is normal, locally it’s now that unless you have a non fault and an admission with insurer ready to pay then you are still responsible for the damage until your cdw company pays up. In practice it’s sensible otherwise you have to read each policy in detail and check its still live before handing over the keys. There will also be exclusions on the cdw policy you are still liable for.

Ok, I understand why it’s done. But it felt like extortion when the first you hear of it is at the desk…

Don’t jump red lights or get caught by speed cameras in an Italian hire car 🙂

That adds additional cost & you don’t find our until they mysteriously take money from your credit card months later.

Cheaper options normally don’t hire at airports, go in winter etc. The headline price is to get you in its meaningless in reality

Never found that to be the case. We pretty much always pick up at the airport, often in winter. Always only end up paying the headline price to. Frequently the price seems too good to be true but actually is correct. We paid £30 for 4 days in Ireland and £90 for 5 days in Italy in ski season and that was a 7 seater. Only thing to watch out for is the extras (like car seats being discussed, snow chains, extra insurance, etc). All avoidable but often the box to tick is a bit hidden all already ticked.

OK headline price for the cheaper onesis right for one driver, no extras etc.
It’s also 2 statements (bad punctuation) if you want it cheaper go off season and avoid airports as they have a surcharge.

2nd point the headline figures can only be compared of its like for like. The cheap headline figure is to get you in and then up sell to the same price as hertz etc. Who give you stuff in the price (like walk up and collect with keys in the car)

I’ve used easycar a few times recently. They now act as brokers. If you see a good rate with e.g. Keddy, then you’re just getting a car from Europcar (and it’ll be most likely cheaper than getting directly from Europcar’s website).

But yeah, go through the slight hassle of bringing your own childseat – prices are generally silly for renting (and as we found in Fuerteventura a couple of years ago, the seats can be a bit dodgy looking).

Go direct to Autoclick
Merc Citi – €65 for 10 days last September
Same again in November
Focus estate on Feb was €72
Etc

It was 10eur a day extra for 2nd driver for us with firefly (olbia) but not sure I would go with them again: business model for them would seem to be that the headline price is cheap but their cars are located off airport sites (shuttle minibuses) and they rely on upselling their own ‘insurance’ and charging ‘uncooperative’ customers for damage that didn’t happen during their rental and also high ‘admin’ fees for absolutely anything and everything else eg changes to policy, pickup/drop off times, speeding/parking tickets etc. It also added quite a bit if time to our arrival/departure as the office was a mile away from the airport and they are not well staffed so lots of waiting around (we were pretty lucky but stories of people waiting hours simply because the staff are so busy and have to ‘invest’ 20+ minutes per customer on hard selling insurance plus you will want 20 more minutes per end to go over every last chip and scratch on whatever they loan you! (Ours was mechanically lovely and immaculate inside but had 20+ separate areas of ‘chargeable’ damage on it 😯 )

Also be aware that despite everyone else still seemingly going 15kph over whatever the frequently changing limit is (often comically slow if the toad surface is damaged eg. 20-30 kph on an a-road) and tailgating you if you don’t, there has been a really huge rise in speeding fines in Italy in last three years: speed cameras are properly hidden and not necessarily in accident black spots -you won’t have any idea you’ve been flashed until your credit card statement several weeks later: it also takes so long for a hire company to get back to you that you will miss the ‘early payment’ and pay double….

So expensive isn’t it?

Would you feel better if I told you it was significantly cheaper before the Brexit vote?

So expensive isn’t it?

Would you feel better if I told you it was significantly cheaper before the Brexit vote?Yawn. Sorry chap, but getting tired of hearing that and I am actually asking about insurance.

The CDW excess and reimbursement is also a real annoyance as you lose money due to the bank bid / offer spread and the fact that the exchange rate can move down in the 7 day period.

So in a nutshell, do you have no choice but to take out the additional driver policy with the car hire company?

Use Autoclick as unmentioned before.
No cost for second driver.
Use a credit card and there is no charges for insurance, etc – debit cards there don’t work the same as here hence then taking heavy deposits.

One of these car seats?