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My car has started to make an unpleasant noise.
We may have to travel down to Devon next week, so I have just checked the cost of a 'normal' car to hire for a day.
The cheapest (cheapest!) I could find was £192 for a single day's hire of a Fiat 500.
I even checked by putting in a day's hire in a few months to see if it was surge pricing or what have you, but even then it's £164 for a midweek day.
I was expecting £50, 60 for day's hire of a supermini type job.
When did car hire get so blimmin expensive? Not TOO long ago (I think 2018) my old car got lunched by an HGV, and I hired a van for a gig I was doing (from this same place, interestingly). The van cost £34 for the weekend.
Even earlier in the mists of time, when I lived in London and Brum city centre I used to hire cars rather than buy one as it was WAY cheaper.
Is this all cost-of-living and fuel cost increases? Has the increase in car prices had such a dramatic effect on car hire costs?
Its coming up to a bank holiday weekend and its Armageddon
Just as nobody else can buy a car just now, car hire companies can't buy them either so their fleet numbers are low. Prices are up a bit, generally, but you've just tried to plump for one of the highest demand dates. Shop around on other sites for your future dates - the site you;re using may be inflating prices for future bookings because of the price its served up for you easter booking enquiry
Is this all cost-of-living and fuel cost increases? Has the increase in car prices had such a dramatic effect on car hire costs?
£192! How much!
Crikey the last time we hired a car was £55 per day but that was about 13 years ago.
Yes, cost of living has increased and there are more to come. We all know the contributing factor in the form of war.
In the far east when the fuel price increases we prepare for price increase in all things.
Just as nobody else can buy a car just now, car hire companies can’t buy them either so their fleet numbers are low. Prices are up a bit, generally, but you’ve just tried to plump for one of the highest demand dates, at short notice.
This too ^
Just yesterday a supplier of mine said Zipcar have doubled their prices - from 70 quid a day to 120
Cost of everything is going up - I guess the hire firms have margins to maintain!
+1 this
Just as nobody else can buy a car just now, car hire companies can’t buy them either so their fleet numbers are low. Prices are up a bit, generally, but you’ve just tried to plump for one of the highest demand dates, at short notice.
I just looked at holidayautos just sticking in a pick up at Heathrow and it was £71 for a day for a supermini with Budget, so have you got some odd pick up point?
They sold a high percentage of their cars at the start of the pandemic as it was dead money to them. They are now struggling like everyone else to buy them so prices go up due to the low availability
I just looked at holidayautos just sticking in a pick up at Heathrow and it was £71 for a day for a supermini with Budget, so have you got some odd pick up point?
Well, if by weird you mean “not Heathrow”, then yes. The first one I tried was my local Europcar depot here in Bath. The second (and even more expensive) was a different co from Bristol city centre.
Christ I would rent out the z3 cluttering up the drive for half that and be happy
Not sure what you're doing there. 30 seconds on enterprise website and I can get a ford focus for 75 pounds a day from tomorrow, and a bunch of similar once between 75 to 100 quid.
For the price you're being quoted for a fiat 500 I can hire a Mercedes C class for the day!
We used to have one car and I’d hire a supermini (but often get better) from the local sixt for £20/day when I needed one for a trip away when my wife also needed the car.
Most rental fleets aren’t owned by them, the manufacturers offload excess new cars to them on a cheap lease basis. They get good sales figures, and get them back 6-12 months later for “approved used” stock in their dealerships. Unfussy hire companies get a flow of cheap new cars and don’t have to tie tens of thousands of pounds in each.
2020 happened, no-one needed to hire cars, those leases expire and cars go back. By 2021 there’s shortages and extended lead times, most manufacturers are selling all they can make to customers so no need to dump them cheaply on hire fleets. Far less supply, more demand (as lots of households have removed a car if one or more wfh now) and what they can get is way more expensive, so that all gets passed on to the customer.
We don’t really “need” two cars but it only takes a few hire weekends a year at current prices to pay for the running costs of the older one.
Before COVID our work deal with a national hire car firm meant we were paying sometimes under £20 a day for a hire car, booked last minute sometimes and delivered to the office all no problem. Now it’s a pain getting a car at all and often they haven’t got one, have only got a mini bus or they phone the day before to say the car they’d allocated is broken and that don’t have any more cars! It’s a ball ache and like has been said above related to supply and demand across the whole car market.
My car’s waiting to go in for repair after being crunched by someone. Their insurer has arranged a hire car as replacement during repair quoting a price of £19 a day. Not sure that helps but shows what B2B are paying.
I’ve just been on a website and been quoted £36 for a car on Monday
Never go direct to the individual websites they are silly prices compared to broker sites
Are you returning to the same site or a different one that always bumps the price up a bit more
Europcar - £48 with enhanced cleaning whatever the hell that is !
If your car is making an unpleasant noise, presumably you are not driving it on local journeys either, and it will likely still be making noises when you get back from Devon. Might as well just get it sorted now, could be something simple.
Rentalcars.com show the 500 just over £100 for a day. Or are you dropping off at a different location?
It's not just you. I was trying to hire a car in Inverness last weekend and cheapest o could find was £200 a day for a basic small car.
I’ve just been on a website and been quoted £36 for a car on Monday
Yeah, that's greenmotion, i'd rather drive rusty nails through my genitals than ever deal with them again.
Is this just a UK thing? Hired a car in the US a month ago and it was a bargain in comparison (BMW X5 for £650 for the week). Not looking forward to the annual ski trip if it’s carried over to European hires too.
Kayak.co.uk got me a right deal for US in that it searched far and wide and found what might’ve been an anomalous** price that I’m midway through consuming. Give it a go…
** $50 Uber ride to a regional airport for a $700 saving.
spooky_b329
If your car is making an unpleasant noise, presumably you are not driving it on local journeys either, and it will likely still be making noises when you get back from Devon. Might as well just get it sorted now, could be something simple.
Thanks for that, it had never occurred to me. 🙄 It’s booked in for after Easter, hence looking for a hire car..
Look at local smaller companies. Our local hire company was about 10-20% cheaper than eurocars etc.
Still something seems odd with your price. Look at other locations just outside bath perhaps.
Before COVID our work deal with a national hire car firm meant we were paying sometimes under £20 a day for a hire car, booked last minute sometimes and delivered to the office all no problem. Now it’s a pain getting a car at all and often they haven’t got one, have only got a mini bus or they phone the day before to say the car they’d allocated is broken and that don’t have any more cars!
Same experience here.
Also see our annual holiday - car hire cost in Northern Spain for first two weeks of July were very high for anything other than a titchy car.
When struggling to get a train+bike ticket for the Badger Divide I looked at a one-way with Enterprise, best part of £200.
So I just looked 'harder' for the train 🙂
TheBrick
Still something seems odd with your price. Look at other locations just outside bath perhaps.
Thanks - I may clear cookies and try again. Defintiely something odd going on.
Unfortunately Bristol is the other big one and most of those are now at the airport, which is about an hour by car away from here! The other place I have used used to be close to Temple Meads, but it's now moved to be miles from anywhere.
🙄 It’s booked in for after Easter, hence looking for a hire car..
I came across a bit sarky, wasn't meant that way 🙂
Might be worth trying the garage to see if you can borrow/hire a courtesy car seeing as you are booked in for repair.
the other option is to take out a £100k loan, buy a nice sports car safe in the knowledge that by the time you sell it at the end of the week it will have risen in value
We've just booked a hire car for a week in Portugal, prices seem to have doubled since 2 years ago!
Shortage of cars world wide due to chip shortages is probably why the costs are so high.
FunkyDunc
I’ve just been on a website and been quoted £36 for a car on Monday
Never go direct to the individual websites they are silly prices compared to broker sites
Are you returning to the same site or a different one that always bumps the price up a bit more
Europcar – £48 with enhanced cleaning whatever the hell that is !
Thanks, just done this and it's from Bristol airport which is about an hour's drive, despite only being 20 miles away!
Even van hire companies are showing £50-60 per day for swb
Get a van
Europcar – £48 with enhanced cleaning whatever the hell that is !
Europcar seems cheaper booking direct. I had to hire one from their Bristol South branch (up the road from Temple Meads) and it wasn't too expensive.