I will be renting a car in Ireland this fall. I know that a lot of people say they book their rental through AutoEurope. What is the advantage of doing that versus booking directly with a rental company?
Thanks for your help with this.
Posted by
4956 posts
I've done both, actually using AE the first time this week. I used Europecar in Ireland and they were fine.
AuroEurope is a consolidator so they compare several companies. If you have a membership or discount program, that might be a reason to stick with another company. I don't think it much matters really, but everyone who uses AE seems to have postive reports.
Posted by
Colorado Springs
2980 posts
I've usually found the quoted prices on AE to be cheaper than the individual company websites for some reason. I have Hertz Gold President status and have never seen Hertz beat the price on Auto Europe.
Their explanation of the insurance options are clearly stated too, which is quite helpful.
Might add that if you have memberships in things like Costco Travel, AAA, USAA, etc. you should check there too. I've occasionally seen great deals pop up on the AAA website, and their zero deductible insurance cover is a relative bargain at about $10 per day.
Some here recommend going with the insurance cover offered by some of the premium credit cards that do provide coverage in Ireland, so if you have one of those it would be worth investigating that too.
Posted by
10 posts
We rented through Auto Europe and got a pretty good price with all the insurance coverage. When we picked up the car at Hertz, we asked to add on tire and glass coverage. The hertz agent told us that we could not add it on to our Auto Europe policy. I had read on this site about so many flat tires and broken windshields that we went ahead and added on another policy that included glass and tires. The third day driving, we punctured a tire on a pothole. It ended up with us being towed to a tire shop that didn’t have what we needed and we were sent back to Hertz to switch out our car for another. The extra policy did seem expensive but it gave us the peace of mind when dealing with an unfortunate situation in a foreign country.
Posted by
Chattanooga, TN USA
588 posts
I booked a 28 day rental through AutoEurope after looking at many individual company options. The price was better and AE caps the per day fee for a second driver at ten days. That was a pretty big savings. You may find better pricing using the autoeurope.ie site.
Keep checking back to see if the price has dropped then cancel and rebook at the lower price. Sign up for their deal alerts, they have deals all the time.