Hi All,

We are off to the above in 2 weeks with 2 bike boxes and 4 people, anyone had any experience with car hire, either direct with a company there or through a web/comparison site?
I’ve heard that there can be lots of stings in the tail like :
– full tank of fuel cost you have to pay for when you take the car being huge price!
– CDW doesnt cover windowscreen tyres clutch, undercarriage etc and you have to pay an extra fee or pay 500E excess
– ‘cleaning fee’ if the car is considered to be in any way less clean than when taken, and you only find out on your visa card when your back home!

just to mention a few!

thanks for any advice everyone!

– full tank of fuel cost you have to pay for when you take the car being huge price!
– CDW doesnt cover windowscreen tyres clutch, undercarriage etc and you have to pay an extra fee or pay 500E excess
– ‘cleaning fee’ if the car is considered to be in any way less clean than when taken, and you only find out on your visa card when your back home!

If you are worried about these, wouldn’t it be better to go to a reputable company like Hertz, Avis or at a push PepeCar. I imagine the horror stories are more likely to come the back street boys, you know the Arthur Daley types, rather than an international company. Pays your money, takes your choice kind of thing.

We used carjet.com [brokers] a couple of years ago, paid online when we ordered and nothing else asked for or expected when we collected the car

Some kind soul keyed the car for us but when we took it back they said not to worry as it was all covered – so recommended

EDIT: This was Girona airport rather than Palma

We’ve used these guys a few times

http://www.recordrentacar.com/price_list.asp?refid=5ZXQ9BDJOD&destination=PMA&lang=EN&gclid=CIXngt3srqsCFYMKfAod2S8lKQ

Spent ages trawling review sites and pretty much everyone got a bad wrap at some point but these guys have been fine everytime.

Gold something, cant remember………..raped us big time. Avoid like the plague. Car with no oil in it. Took 3 ltrs to get to the dipstick, dirty, charged us 70 euro for fuel, even though it cost 35 euro to fill up, didnt want to know when we dropped the car back, just paid the oil receipt and walked away from us. Just use Hertz or Avis. Just had a Seat Leon on Lanzarote for 10 days, all in for £280 , including 60 euro damage waiver inc. Petrol in Lanzarote ( I know miles from Mallorca) was 0.8 euro a litre unleaded, so cheap. Should be similar in Mallorca.

This is them, one of millions of reports on there crook like ways

http://www.holidaycheck.com/view-Travel+forum-Warning+don%C2%B4t+use+Goldcar+Rental+when+in+Spain-id_67939.html

Doyouspain.com is who I’ve used and never had any troubles. unless you plan to do some off roading where the undercarriage is likely to get damaged?! We managed to run a tyre off the rim but we managed to find a garage that put it back on for us for free! just make sure if you pay for the fuel to return it empty that it is indeed full before you set off!

Petrol in Lanzarote ( I know miles from Mallorca) was 0.8 euro a litre unleaded

How the **** can fuel on an island in the middle of the Atlantic be 60 pence a litre? is it not taxed at all?

we hired a 5 door citreon berlingo through holidayautos (ended up being avis) for £218 for the week with second named driver, full excess wavier etc. New car with only 5000km on the clock, easy pick up, no worries on drop off. Was a pick up full of fuel and drop off full of fuel. (some are pick up full and drop off empty which i found a bit strange)

Made the initial booking with them but they then got back in touch and said that deal wasnt available but they had one through another broker for £20 more. Bit annoying at the time but turned out ok when there with no issues.

How the **** can fuel on an island in the middle of the Atlantic be 60 pence a litre? is it not taxed at all?

No idea, thats how much it was. Was there 2 weeks ago…..

thanks for all the opinions and options!
after spending a loooong time looking through big and small companies, its seems standard practice to exclude the tyres/windows/undercar from all insurance policies, and you have to pay an extra, which varies from 1quid a day to 4 !!!

In the end went with a well known brand name, berlingo for 222quid for 2 weeks with free 2nd driver
http://www.economycarhire.com/

will report back how we get on with them!

Here you go Ben, gasóleo A is your basic diesel. 😉
http://www.gasofa.es/gasolineras-en-palmas-las-localidad-palmas-de-gran-canaria-las.htm

I’d recommend using a bigger company for hiring. Last time we went we only decided while we were out there that we wanted a car for a few days. It was the beginning of the school summer holidays so everywhere was busy and actually finding a company with a hire car available was a task.

We eventually found a small company (who actually hired out Pinarello road bikes too), who said it was the last car they had available on the island. There are no real financial horror stories here, but the car was a little interesting.

Renault Twingo “cabriolet” – it had a fabric roof you had to roll back :D. Two tyres had been kurbed so badly they had bulges in, a dented door, and then when heading out of town towards the mountains the digital readout speedo just packed in.

We found it quite funny at the time, but looking back on it the car was in reality a death trap! We actually had no problems with the car at all despite taking it uphill and down dale, but we could’ve had some big problems.

All spanish hire cars have damage and gouges, scratches deep enough to loose road kill. Our Leon had no wheel trims. I questioned this , as I didnt want a bill for them and they said Spanish cars have none, because they get stolen. Thats another reason why I took the damage waiver out, as how they could tell, if I damaged it or not , was always going to be an issue.
Its just the spanish way, I suppose. We had a noisy wheel bearing, which drove us nuts and when we got back to Gatwick, the taxi we had booked, also had a noisy wheel bearing too….Was great to get in a silent car when I drove our cars afterwards.
Fuel was dirt cheap, but food was very, very expensive.

We paid very little for a Berlingo which was ideal for bikes through Europcar. When we got to Palma we had to pay for a whole tank of petrol at exorbitant rates which actually exceeded the rental cosiderably. This was through Crown who are large and supposedly reputable. To add insult to injury they even charged us a fee for filling it up!We were so annoyed we drove round and round on the last day and still didn’t use the petrol we had paid for.

I think you should go with online hiring a few weeks in advance. I visited Alcudia one summer and, if peak season, it can be hard to get a car not to mention unavailability (spending more money on a model you don’t really need).

It is a good idea hiring a car, specially if you prefer doing your own thing. My brother hired recently with Car hire majorca airport, a friend’s recommendation (those websites searching multiple suppliers), and it was quite good.