I'm off on holiday later today. Flying to France. Picking up car at airport. This time it's Avis. (By the way,what make of vehicle does that mean I am likely to get?)
I've used most of the big car hire companies, and there has never seemed to be much difference between them. So are they all basically the same - or do some do a little bit better in terms of customer service, how well they clean the cars, etc.?
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Hired from Alamo in Florida recently, got a free upgrade and they were generally fairly helpful. Later in the holiday was present at a hire from Hertz who were surly and not at all prepared to be flexible, even in respect of putting me on as second driver which was clearly in my mate's paperwork but their "code" didn't agree.
But at the end of the day we still got from A to B to C to schedule so no harm done.
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We hired a car from Avis a few weekends ago when in Cork. Booked a mid-size car and ended up with a Skoda Octavia 2.0TDI Elegance, which was fine. The were trying to 'upsell' to the Nissan Quashqai (sp?), but also had Vauxhalls in the car park (astra/vectra)
I've never found much difference between any of the big players, other than on price which seems to vary wildly for the same car type, presumably driven by availibility? For example I paid just over £50 for a weekends hire of the Octavia from Avis, when Hertz/Europcar wanted more than double that for the same car type. The Avis section of the car park was fairly well stocked with mid-size cars though...
Peter
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Forget what you usually drive Peter but how was the Skoda?
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My car's an A4 2.0T convertible (perfect weather for it this week!!), and my partner has an A3, so pretty familiar with VAG offerings. I've only driven one other car (An A5) with the new 2.0TDI engine; I assume both were the 140 versions. I never felt the Skoda needed any more power - plenty of grunt, cruised well on the motorway (was fitted with cruise control) and it used very little fuel as well. My mum has a new Golf with the same engine; that must be a cracking car based on how it went in the larger Octavia.
Seemed well put togther, though with only 3,000kms on the clock you'd expect nothing else. All felt very familiar, despite never having driven a Skoda before - the look and feel of most of the other controls was generic VAG, and none the worse for it, though interestingly some felt less substantial; the key is standard VAG 'flip' type, but felt noticably lighter then the Audi one and undamped grab handles (the shame!!) another example of deliberate product differentiation.
All in all a fine car, though I'm not a fan of the hatchbacks looks, much prefering the estate, and the faux wood trim of the 'Elegance' spec was just awful :-)
Peter
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Cheers Peter... interesting thoughts.
>>>faux wood trim of the 'Elegance' spec was just awful
They're not the only ones but VW/Audi led the field in stick-on wood from the early 70s.
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Another thought on the fuel consumption; being a hire car it was full on collection, and I filled it up again before dropping off. A quick calulation indicated that it had done just over 60mpg over some mixed city/country/motorway driving. Now the margin of error is pretty high I imagine as I only used quarter of a tank, but even so it seemed pretty impressive (certainly after the 32mpg of my car!!), and was in line with what the trip computer was telling me.
Also forgot to mention that the car was a dark metallic burgundy/wine colour, which was probably not the best colour for it, though it contrasted beautifully with the wood trim ;-)
No idea how much they cost over here, but assuming it's less than than a Golf 2.0TDI Match with a few extras (£20k after discount) an estate in a brighter colour with a leather interior and auto lights/wiper/dimming rear view mirror would be a good buy I think
Peter
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I generally find Sixt to be the best in Europe for value for money, service, car types and upgrades. The company I used to work for used them for hire cars and I tend to go with them if I hire privately. They mainly have VAG group as well as BMWs and Mercs.
The company I'm with at present uses Europcar for car hire and they have some seriously dodgy cars in the fleet - Renault Fluence anyone?
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I've used Sixt a number of times in Germany and Spain and found them to be perfectly good all round - including free upgrades when chosen car type not available.
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Most easy going and pleasant car hire company I've dealt was a local company in La Gomera Canary Islands. I borrowed a car on the last day after a break form driving. No imprint of credit card required and I paid in cash. Asking about petrol was told to top it up to whatever it was but "don't put in more than 6 Euros worth", you won't use more than that.
I needed the car for the short trip to the ferry port early next morning and was told to leave the car unlocked at the ferry car park with the keys under the seat.
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>> I've used Sixt a number of times in Germany and Spain and found them to
>> be perfectly good all round - including free upgrades when chosen car type not available.
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To be fair, they don't really have any choice but to upgrade for free if they've run out of the chosen car type!!
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didn't need it twice :-)
Last edited by: PeterS on Fri 8 Apr 11 at 14:55
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Well, Avis turned out to be much the same as everyone else.
At the desk I was offered a Clio, or for a small extra sum of money, a DS3. I replied "I'll take the cheaper one." (I may be a loyal Citroen driver, but the DS3 is a car I just don't get.)
So it was that I got a silver diesel Clio. Strangely enough, the last time I hired a "Ford Fiesta or similar" at Nice Airport (a couple of years ago, from Europcar) I also got a silver diesel Clio. On that occasion it turned out to be a Clio Campus, and getting the suitcases in the boot was a bit of a squeeze. On this occasion, there was no problem at all. The boot was huge. This was because it turned out to be a Clio Break - or, as they say in the UK, "Sport Tourer". Oddly enough, I hadn't spotted that before I opened the boot and put the cases in. It's one of these estate cars that doesn't really look like an estate car - unlike a Peugeot 206SW or a Skoda Fabia estate or even a Ford Fusion.
There wasn't really much to complain about. The car was straight-forward to drive, had enough oomph, gave about 60 mpg, had good luggage space and cubby space. On the other hand, it had appreciably more diesel rattle than my Berlingo, and I found the ventilation system rather unintuitive to operate. I also would never have figured out how to fold down the back seats if I hadn't consulted the manual. (That probably says more about me than it does about the car!)
And as for Avis standards, it has to be said that while the inside of the car was just about satisfactory in terms of cleanliness, it was far from being immaculate.
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Are all car hire companies basically the same? - smokie
