Can anyone comment on if it is really best to book a rental from the USA? I read a lot of bad reviews about what happens when the car is picked up from Eurocar. I am planning to rent in Bath about Sept 24th for a week and will be there on the 20th and I am thinking if I rent when I am there I will know the price and will see the car.
I wonder if it availability Sept 24th will be that bad.
You could do it either way but..... If you walk up the price will climb by a factor of umpteen.
Book ahead (the price the day before will be the same as it is tonight). If you don't like the one assigned, walk back in and ask for something else in the same class and the price won't change. Move up a notch and so will the cost.
Actually, it's Europcar and they're one of the best. What have you heard bad about them?
Hi. I would book ahead. The main reason is that it will be a much better price and you will be able to have more choices on the type of car. This can be especially true if you want an automatic since you will be driving on the opposite side of the road. I would try Auto Europe to see what rates they offer plus look at Kemwel too.
For some unknown reason, AE and Kemwel are the standard/only car rental response from Mr Steves' staff.
Based on almost fifty years of renting cars internationally and having my sore tail in a rental for close to six months a year for the last twenty (most of that internationally with about half in Europe and Britain) -- there is not a single sentence in the preceding post with which I agree with one exception.
The exception being the potential desirability of having an automatic -- which has nothing to do with one being available when you show up and the dude in front of you got the last one on the lot. If this is important, you need to draw from a larger potential pool such as an airport or major train station -- not a dink place like Bath. Even at Heathrow/Gatwick I've seen people in front of me completely distraught since the promised automatic just wasn't there. It obviously doesn't alway happen, but it happens. Last year at Turnhouse they gave me an automatic for much less than the manual price -- just to get it down to Manchester, I guess.
I'm gonna second Ed's comment. If you need an automatic, and if I'm to be honest even though I drive stick sitting on the left side of the car, I don't dare do it sitting on the right and driving on the other side, too much to keep track of, then I would suggest you rent from a large company and pick the car up at Heathrow airport and drive to Bath. The reason being, every tourist takes the train to Bath and rents there, meaning the odds of people wanting automatic cars is going to be higher and there will be less of them as it's a smaller pool of rental cars. Heathrow on the other has less leisure/american tourists rent from them and has a very large group of cars to pick from. So if I were doing it, I'd rent a car at Heathrow and drop it off at your final destination. If you book before you get there, the cost savings of pre-booking will likely more than make up for the fee to drop off at a different location.
Of course I don't know where you're coming from so maybe Heathrow isn't a good option for you. In that case, I still recommend you book ahead as that still saves you a ton of money. Last time I went, I wasn't sure I would want a car and after deciding I wanted to tour the Cotswolds for one day the husband and I ended up paying a hundred GPB for a car for just one day. Usually that same car is thirty GBP.... Personally, I've had great luck with Europcar in the EU/UK but I have also had great luck with Avis. Actually, Avis rents my favorite car to rent when I'm in the UK, the Mercedes A class, so if I can, I like to rent from them just for that. If you're worried about not getting an acceptable vehicle, still book ahead, but book a flexible rate which you can cancel at any time. Usually this just means not pre-paying. That way if you really are dissatisfied, there are other places you can take your business, even if it means you'll pay more for booking the day of.
Since I left a lot hanging on the last go round, here's some elaboration from the way I see it. As said, I spend a lot of time in rental cars -- this amounts to about a dozen vehicles a year, internationally.
For a given season in a given area for a given duration, a car is going to cost a given amount. There will be no significant fluctuation depending on how much prior you prebook -- you just have to prebook instead of walking up to the counter like a dolt. Prebooking means prebooking, now days using the internet. My practice is to do it at the departure gate while I'm killing time and it takes less than five minutes. I've forgotten and had to do it on the landing roll. I've really screwed up a couple of times and done it in the rental hall. In all three cases the price was the same if I'd done it months before. Renting a car is just not that big a deal. I use kayak and stab whoever has the best deal unless there's an outfit that I really like in the area and their price is within a couple of bucks per day of the cheapest.
Which brings us to the Kemwel and AE issue.
Kemwel gets dismissed since, with all the back and forth, it takes too long to get something simple done -- they're hand-holders for people who need training wheels (or are so scared they think they need training wheels).
AE is a consolidator. They're the best of the lot (Holiday Autos is the worst and should be avoided like a social disease). But there's a problem with any consolidator -- money. (They're easy to work with and will talk to you, but it's just another bunch of hand-holding for a simple operation. Based on reports seen in these forums, their answers are often glib guesses or erroneous deductions and bear no relation to the real world.) the money problem is that you have to pay up front. If everwho they foist you off upon doesn't have what you thought you'd reserved, you've lost your leverage to step over to the next counter and get them to match the deal -- which they will. I use AE about five percent of the time if they clearly have the best deal by far, but I cringe when I do it and every once in a while kick myself in the butt for having done so.
Etalvarez brings up the question of left-handed shifting. It's a non-issue unless you start thinking about it. You can fly, shoot, or stick a finger in your nose with either hand. It's muscle memory. Leave your brain alone and your body will take care of it.
Anyway, one thing to remember is that they don't stick your name on a car six months ahead of time. You get the closest match between what they have to what you requested when you eventually show up. If you need something different it will be at the prebooked rate rather than the walk-up rate. As an example, if you reserved a small automatic and all they have is a slightly larger one, you're probably going to get that at the same price since they want to get as many cars in service as possible and don't want you wandering over to the other guy.
There may be fallacies in my thinking. I usually only travel alone or with one other person -- the smallest, cheapest car suits me just fine since I usually need to squish into some tight spots. Speciality vehicles or specific brands generally hold no interest for me. These considerations may change the entire picture.
