Car Hire Tips UK

When the car rental companies are organizing their fleets and setting their prices they look at the most popular times to rent and price up accordingly. For leisure rentals this means that the most popular time to hire a car is at the weekend. No great surprises there.

The same is true when people hire vans too, as you tend to do jobs that need vans at the weekend too. This gives the rental companies something of a problem. In order to service the demand of the leisure customers at the weekend they need to provide enough cars and vans to cover their orders. This means that in the week they could be stuck with too many cars doing nothing.

As a customer, you really want to be renting when they have too many cars doing nothing because this is where you can get some really great rental bargains. One of the ways rental firms measure performance is on vehicle utilization so there’s really nothing worse than having cars sitting around doing nothing.

That’s where you come in. If you need a car at the weekend when everyone else does you’re going to pay the going rate, but imagine you turning up when the car park’s full and there’s no queue. If you get this right, you’ll be amazed at how cheap you can get that car rented for.

I know it’s often impractical to travel during the week instead of the weekend but just compare the rates you can get sometimes, before you need to travel and you might see some rates that make you think twice before you follow the crowd.

One final tip on this theme is to look out for seasonal events that can also cause this effect on rental companies. Christmas is hugely busy so imagine how many cars are parked doing nothing at the beginning of January. The same logic can apply to regional events, festivals, sports events, etc. so do some research if you can and travel when it you can get the best deals.

Most of the time when people are getting quotes for car hire they’ll go for either a compact or economy car, based on the logical assumption that these are going to return the best prices; and for the most part you’d be right. However, this is somewhere else where you could sniff out a bargain.

Because most people book economy and compact cars these are in the greatest demand, have the greatest overall fleet and the lowest holding costs for the rental company. The larger car groups are in much lower volume and have far higher costs if they don’t get rented out to customers.

Because of this the rental companies will manage their availability of the larger car groups as carefully as possible to avoid getting stuck with these cars in the car park. With this in mind if you’re making a last minute booking it’s worth checking the prices on larger cars too as you might be in for a pleasant surprise.

There’s two ways you can benefit from this situation. The first (and most obvious) way is that the rental company may well have priced a larger car cheaper than a car in the smaller but more popular compact category. If this is the case you might as well take advantage right away and get more car for your money.

The second (and less obvious) way to benefit in this situation is to try and get a free upgrade. This method can take a little more cheek on your part but it’s worth asking about free upgrades when you collect your vehicle.

If it’s late in the day on a Friday for example, the station doesn’t want to be stuck with any big cars in the car park, as it could be stuck with them until Monday. If they’re going to be stuck with anything, they’d much rather it was a small car as it’ll cost them less and there’s always the chance that they’ll shift it on Saturday.

In this scenario you could well get a car two or three groups bigger without having to pay any more (or very little more) for the privilege, and the rental station will probably be happy with the deal too, so it’s worth asking.

If you’re looking for cheap car hire, most of the tips you’ll read, including a lot of those here, will tell you how to get the cheapest price when you rent a car. But there are more ways to cut the cost of your car hire than just the price you pay for the rental.

With the ever increasing price of fuel these days following a few simple rules to cut the amount of petrol (or diesel) you use could end up saving you a lot of money. Luckily, rental cars are usually well maintained and the tyres correctly inflated so they should already be reasonably efficient to start with.

Avoid short trips
Avoid taking lots of short journeys if possible. Try to combine short trips so that once you warm up the engine, you keep it running for a while. Continually warming up your engine for lots of short journeys will waste fuel.

Turn off the air conditioning
Try not to excessively use your air conditioning, as this will cause your car to burn more fuel. On the other hand, driving with the windows down is also inefficient as the drag on the car increases, especially at high speeds.

As a general rule, it’s most efficient to use air conditioning for motorway driving only when necessary and wind the windows down on slower journeys.

Drive Slower
Avoid erratic driving. Driving like a boy-racer by flooring the accelerator at the lights when in a rush or slamming on the brakes when driving too fast you will increase your cars fuel consumption (up to 60%). Try to accelerate and brake smoothly and steadily to improve fuel economy as well as your road safety.

Drive at the recommended speed. If you drive too fast you will notice your fuel gauge dropping quickly. Every 5 miles per hour that you drive over 60mph can reduce your fuel economy by 10%. If you’re not in a hurry to get anywhere, doing 70mph will use between 20% and 30% more fuel than doing 50mph - suddenly being stuck behind a lorry doesn’t seem so bad!

Don’t rev the engine. Revving the engine whilst stationary does nothing except waste fuel!

Lose excess weight
Avoid driving with an unnecessarily full car. An empty roof rack or a full boot will add to your fuel consumption.

Avoid idling
Avoid excessive idling of your engine. Many people run their engines whilst stationary in order to warm them up but the car is then consuming fuel but not going anywhere. Instead invest in some decent de-icer and try to drive off straight away.

If waiting somewhere for more than a few minutes, waiting to pick someone up or stuck in a  traffic jam then it is often more economical to switch the engine off. Idling also adds to pollution.

Use the gears wisely
Drive in the correct gear. The correct use of gears can make savings on your fuel bill of up to 15%! Most fuel is consumed in the lower gears when starting as more power is needed but when driving at higher speeds you should drive in the highest gear possible for best fuel economy.

Read the road ahead
When driving, try to look ahead and read the conditions of the road. Look out for anything that might require you to slow down or stop such as traffic lights or someone attempting to park. By anticipate what is coming up, you’ll not only be a safer driver, but you’ll save fuel by starting to slow down early and not needing to come to a stop.

So, follow this simple guide and you save a few more pounds.

Car rental rates are usually governed to some extent by length or rental so you can get hourly rates, daily rates, weekly rates, even monthly rates if you plan to rent a car as an alternative to short term leasing. In between all of these there are also things like special “weekend” rates (which can be as long as 4 days) and a range of other rates depending on when the rental company needs to move it’s fleet around.

All very interesting you might think, but how does that benefit you? Well, just having an idea that this is how the rates work means that with a little flexibility in your travel arrangements you could save yourself a lot of money.

To demonstrate this, let’s take an example of two rental requests with very small differences to the rental but huge impact to the cost.

Rental 1
Check out on Thursday morning at 11:30 am
Return on Monday at 12:30pm

Rental 2
Check out on Thursday at 12:00 noon
Return on Monday at 11:30am

While the two rentals look very similar they would be charged very differently. For instance Car Hire Company X will charge Rental 1 out as a 5 day rental on their daily rates, but Rental 2 from the same company would be a 4 day rental on their discounted weekend rates. So, half an hour or so adjustments to your journey can make a big difference.

Renting cars doesn’t have to be as expensive as you’d imagine and sometimes you can a great deal just by working with the car rental companies systems to get the best deal you can without compromising on the service you receive.

Car Rental companies have many complex operations and fees that they need to take into account when setting their rental charges so, if you know what these are and how to avoid them, you can get a car rental, very similar to the one you ideally want, at a greatly reduced price.

Follow these simple tips and use as many of them as you can while still getting the rental you need and you should be able to save a lot of money on your next car rental.

• Picking a Car up at the Airport
Car Rental companies have to pay what’s called an “Airport Concession Fee” for all the cars they rent from their airport locations. This is basically a charge made by the Airport to the rental company to allow them to rent cars from the Airport. Obviously the rental companies pass this on to their customers, so if there’s a rental location close to the Airport you can use, you could save money by booking there instead.

• Book the Most Popular Car Group
Car Rental companies have to manage a complex stock system to make sure they’ve got the right cars in the right places at the right time. The more popular the car group, the more difficult it is for them to maintain stock. Generally, if they don’t have the car you booked they’ll give you a free upgrade. This is because the larger, more expensive cars don’t get booked as much as the smaller cheaper cars. If you book the smallest car that is acceptable to you, there’s always a good chance of getting a free upgrade if you’re picking it up at a busy time.

• Book Well in Advance
Because it’s much easier to forecast how many cars they need if they’ve got all their bookings in advance, the car rental companies will very often have their cheapest rates loaded for rates well in advance, so book your car as soon as you know your travel dates and save more.

• Always Get a Discount Code
Apart from during peak periods (Christmas, Easter and the height of Summer), you should be always able to get some kind of discount code, although you might have to hunt around a little to find it. Always check the terms of the offers as often, even though an offer might say it’s for a weekend rental, you could still use the offer for other times. It’s worth searching a little to find one.

• Watch Your Collection and Return Times
Another trick to watch out for is that most rental companies charge daily rates. That means if you pick up a car at 10am and take it back at 11am the next day you’ll get charged for 2 days rental. Wherever possible try and ensure that your return time is always the same, or preferably just before your collection time. This way you’ll never get charged the extra day.

• Where Possible, Book When They’ve Got Too Many Cars
If your travel plans are reasonably open try and book when they’ve got too many cars and you could land yourself an absolute bargain. Book just after Christmas and you could find that all the cars that have just been returned are very cheap to book. In car rental terms, a car sat in their car park is a huge cost and they’d rather let you have it very cheaply than just have it sitting there.

• Always Ask for More
The one golden rule to bear in mind is to always ask for more, the worst they can do is say no. When you get to the counter always ask if they have any free upgrades. Often, this prompt might be all they need to remember that they can’t shift that big Mercedes out the back, and if you had it, they wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore!

Each one of these tips should save you some money the next time you rent a car. If you can combine all 7 of them into one rental, you’ll be amazed by how little you need to pay to drive a very nice car for your rental!

The car rental market can be a nightmare for consumers with so many different rates and rental charges that finding a bargain can be much harder than you think. So what do you need to know to get your car hire at the cheapest possible price?

1. Choosing the Right Supplier
Car rental companies sell direct, through 3rd party brokers and through travel aggregators so there’s potentially 3 different places to go to get a quote for exactly the same vehicle. The lowest cost option depends on where each is in the market at the point of need so it really does pay to shop around.

2. Airports
Car rental companies have to pay a concession to the airport for selling car hire on the airport itself and of course that cost is passed on to the customer by way of higher rental rates. So if there’s an alternative rental station nearby, weigh up the cost and convenience of picking up the rental car there instead

3. When to Start and End your Rental
Sometimes the rental companies have special rate deals that kick in at certain times, weekend packages that start from noon on a Thursday for example, so when getting a quote if you can be flexible with your collection and drop off times see if it makes a difference. In some cases returning a car half an hour earlier can save you a full day’s rental charge!

4. Choosing the Right Car
The most popular groups of car hired by rental companies are the economy and compact groups so they will usually offer the best prices. However, this also means that they will occasionally have excessive stock of larger, less popular cars so look out for special deals on cars you wouldn’t think you could afford. You might get a pleasant surprise.

5. When to Book Car Hire
Unlike the airline industry the car rental market doesn’t really yield manage their fleets effectively so there’s no real optimal time to buy. What they do from time to time though to combat this is to offer special rates for booking early during their peak periods, including Christmas, Easter and other public holidays. Take advantage of these where possible as trying to hire a car on arrival at Christmas for example, could find you walking out disappointed.

So, you can see that the car rental market isn’t an exact science and you need to do a little shopping around to get the best deals. Remember to look well in advance of your journey if possible, try and be flexible on your collection and drop off times and look in unexpected places for special deals. Hopefully you’ll run into one of the many bargains out there.