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Why do some car hire /courtesy cars get run empty to empty.
I don’t want to give them free fuel but how are you supposed to predict exactly how many miles and fuel you will consume.
My car is being repaired and I’ve no idea when it’ll be fixed. If I brim the courtesy car it’ll be fixed tomorrow equally I don’t want to be having to fill up every 5 mins.
I thought Jerry can is the answer but that means you spend the journey high on fumes.
that means you spend the journey high on fumes.
If your getting any fumes in the cab from your Jerry can you have a leak.
I think it’s from the plastic pipe funnel thing / any spillage on the outside of the can.
Why do some car hire /courtesy cars get run empty to empty.
It's easier for them. They obviously don't care what's easier for their customers, but maybe their customers are one-off and don't chose who the hire is from.
Ah so not an actually Jerry can those useless plastic pieces of crap you can't get a pour out of without covering everything in fuel.
First rule of fuel containers. Clean up any spillage before you put it in the car.
you don't have to return empty, would handing it back with £10>£20 fuel really hurt you that much?
Surely it can't be empty to empty. When I've hired cars or vans they've just noted: "1/4 full" or whatever it is on the paperwork and expected it back with approximately the same.
They haven't even expected it back the same, they just charge the difference if it's low (admittedly at almost motorway services fuel prices). Enterprise will even let you prepay for a full tank (at a much more sensible cost), then refund you whatever's left in the tank when you return it!
Last time I hired a car they even randomly refunded my credit card £27 a few days later. I never did get around to finding out why. And this was after having to call them to explain I needed the car for another 3 days and would be returning it at the other end of the country, and they let me do that at the insurer's corporate discounted rate!
I really wish I could join in with the general hateing of car hire companies on here, but I just can't.🤷♂️
Never come across this. It’s always been full to full in my 12 years of hiring cars from Sixt and budget
Any hire cars I've had for work have always been delivered full and have to be returned full?
It’s common practice with the budget hire companies in Spain. I’ve always assumed that it is because they probably end up with more fuel than at at start so able to make a few quid extra profit. It’s a ball ache though
Bruneep FTW.
Trail rat - Yup a crappy plastic thing. But even with a proper steel can you’d need a funnel, surely?
I have had this. I don't find it particularly tricky - just keep a mental note of consumption and make sure you don't put too much in before you return it. More difficult if you are doing lots of short trips and don't know when you are going to return it but if you know it does 4000 miles on a tank or 60 miles on a tenner then you can guesstimate how much to put in for your last fill
I really wish I could join in with the general hateing of car hire companies on here, but I just can’t.🤷♂️
On the whole I too have no issue with hire car companies apart from the VW Golf “or similar”. It’s never similar.
I paid extra for, I think, an Octavia or similar. They gave me a Renault Captur - which really is the worse thing I’ve driven recently & nothing like an Octavia. (Admittedly it was only £3 extra and they were the only hire place still open at Stansted after my flight was delayed so I didn’t moan too much).
Just drive it like you stole it.
Most decent companies I've used are full to full (with an agreed price for them to fill it up if you don't bring it back full) I can only think of Enterprise as one of the bigger companies that do the quarter tank thing. Sometimes the part-tank thing is simply because the hire co doesnt have a facility or staff resources to fill the tank if you don't bring it back full.
If the part tank thing is what you expect then perhaps its fine but I sort of expect to receive something I've hired to be ready to use - you know like when you hired a VHS you expected the tape been rewound - its a basic courtesy . I expect it to have air in the tyres and fuel in the tank and not to have to jump start it. Not to have to pump the tyres up but for it OK to bring it back with 5PSI in the tyres because that's how I picked it up.
Fuel gauges are very vague. I tend to use the trip counter as a more meaningful fuel guage (a habit from when the gauge failed on an old car of mine) On most cars I've driven the fuel gauge doesnt move for the first 100 miles / quarter of a tanks worth of driving*. By the time the needle in on half you're usually really on a quarter of a tank so once its on a quarter theres really not much in there. Generally you've hired a car of van because you've got stuff to do and you hire the car / van at the date and time you want to start doing it - so playing guess the range for a given amount of fuel is a concern you can do without at that point in time.
Its all relative though there can be bigger frustrations with hiring vehicles - I once hired a van from a company in Denniston - shown to the van, signed the paperwork including signing to confirm it had a fuel tank, handed the keys.. went round to put my kit in the back and realised it only had three wheels. Which seemed to surprise them. Mind you as a van that couldn't be driven it was a damn sight safer than the replacement they gave me 🙂
* which means even on Full to Full hires you may actually be paying for someone else's driving if you brim it on return.