Car rental services are becoming more and more popular among tourists in absolutely different countries. Somewhere this is due to the variety and luxury of the cars offered, convenience in moving. However, in some countries, car rental is not a tourist's whim, but simply a necessity, due to the lack of alternative modes of transportation.
But is everything as simple and safe as it looks like at first glance?
Often car rental companies, especially small local ones, are not completely honest and try in every possible way to deceive a tourist in order to earn as much as possible from a careless vacationer. It is important to remember about possible risks and be really attentive when renting a car.
- 1. Non-refundable deposit - in fact, any deposit that is blocked on your card by the rental company, when returning the car, must be refunded. However, some dishonest car rentals block a deposit on your card, and when returning the car, they assure that the block will be removed from the amount on the card in a couple of days, and you should not worry, you can safely fly home. However, after a while, instead of removing the block, the amount of money itself is debited from the card.
2. The contract - a life hack with the indication of the most unacceptable points in the contract in small print has long been familiar to everyone. And really, who would want to spend precious vacation time on a thorough reading of hundreds of points of the contract? Here we still recommend studying all points of contract, so that the vacation does not end with an unpleasant surprise in the form of a fine for violating any clause of the contract.
3. Insurance - most often rental companies assure that the cost of renting a car already includes an insurance policy, but as practice shows, in most such cases, this insurance has many restrictions and is single-sided. It is best to apply for a full coverage policy, which includes the risks of theft, accident and other various incidents.
4. Mileage restriction - is a common practice for car rentals, when a daily mileage limit is set for each car, which companies often forget to warn about. Most often, this limit is 200 km per day. As a result, you are carelessly riding a rented car, and a small fine is already dripping for exceeding the mileage.
5. The process of transferring and receiving a car is perhaps the most important point that you should pay close attention to. When getting a car from a rental company, you need to inspect the car as carefully as possible, both outside and inside, in order to avoid additional penalties when returning the car. Moreover, we recommend recording a full inspection on video. Unscrupulous companies often do not note in the special act of receiving and transferring the car some old scratches or dents or breakdowns that you might not have noticed during inspection. There are cases when such violations are even specially prepared by car rental employees (most often these are some kind of electrical malfunctions that simply cannot be noticed during inspection). But, when you return the car, the rentacar staff will definitely not miss them and will issue a decent fine for damage. In addition, it is worth remembering that the rented car must be returned exactly at the fixed hour, as clean and with the same amount of gasoline in the tank as when receiving it.
And yet, despite all the pitfalls of the rental business, it is worth noting that there are definitely many advantages to renting a car abroad, most important of all is your own comfort and convenience. And of course, do not forget that to drive a car abroad, you need to have both a national driving license and an international driving permit.
