Greetings all.
My wife and I are heading to Scotland in September and are interested in renting a car there.
The prices on Kayak seem a bit out of line.
Wondering if anyone has a recommendation for affordable car rentals in the UK?
5.09.22
Thanks everyone for your help.
We ended up renting with Celtic legend which was very efficient and reasonably priced all things considered. Happy travels to you all.
Celtic Legend are a company I see recommended all the time on various travel forums which I look at and on Facebook groups too. I've never used them having no need, but I have yet to read anything bad about them. Whether they are affordable for you I have no idea, but going through a third party because the deal looks good is to be avoided. Deal direct.
Avoid at all costs a company called Green Motion. Whilst a legitimate business it employs many sharp practises and the internet is littered with complaints and poor reviews about it.
Kayak seems out of line with what?
The biggest car rental company in Scotland is Arnold Clark judging by the number of their cars that you see when driving around Scotland.
Automatic cars will be more expensive than manuals. Prices have increased, as car fleet sizes were reduced during the height of the pandemic.
Celtic Legends/Arnold Clark. They are somehow related. There's a thread from a few months ago that discusses how they are connected. All I know is that they treated us very well. Matched a lower price I found (after I already had reserved with them), free upgrade, free navigation. Easy pick up and drop off from Glasgow airport. The only trouble I had was finding the courtesy phone at the airport to let them know we had arrived. But that was my failure to follow directions properly.
Our last time renting in Scotland, we used Arnold Clark. Best price we found, plus they let us pick up in Inverness and return at the Edinburgh airport for no extra one-way charge.
If you want to check other companies, check directly on the rental companies’ Websites (Hertz, Europcar, Enterprise, etc.), rather than Kayak.
This is just another endorsement for Celtic Legends--at least in terms of their quick responses and flexibility. Our rental is to begin in Inverness on May 23. We are scheduled to return the car in Glasgow. We are being charged a fee for a one-way drop off, but I felt it was very reasonable (£31.25), and it may be that there is a charge because I requested a car with an automatic transmission. We are not being charged for an additional driver, and the company is going to pick us up from our hotel in Inverness and drop us off at our hotel in Glasgow. We opted for a dash cam for a very nominal charge (£4.17) and can keep the SD card for an additional £4.17, which I am pretty delighted about as we will have a record of our days on the road, and I typically throw together a short montage of photos and videos from our trips.
I made Arnold Clarke reservations 10 months in advance of next month's trip, and your observation about rates being absurd is correct. I'm thrilled with $600 for two weeks with extra driver and different pickup/dropoff. I'm now searching for next summer's rentals and the prices are still absurd, but if you go to a local website (xxx.co.uk instead of .com) you can sometimes find a surprising difference. I'll make my reservation as soon as the dates become reservable, which seems to be about ten months in the future.
Current pries make a private chauffeur or buying used car seem reasonable! The prices, if they persist, will spawn a new business of short term car purchases or car time-sharing .
Rental prices are outrageous. I reserved one for Scotland for September and I’ve never paid anywhere close to what it will cost. Our Scotland rental will cost 4x more than my upcoming Spain rental. If you want to go to some rural out of the way places, there are few options, so you pay the price. We reserved through Enterprise.
I just booked a car with Celtic Legends and although it’s expensive it’s far less than our rental in Ireland through Auto Europe, and AE had the best price I found in Ireland. Rentals are just crazy expensive this year as opposed to pre-Covid times. The same is true in the U.S.
I just booked our rental for September with Arnold Clark. I had planned to go with Enterprise but in the past month the prices have skyrocketed. I went to Kayak and found much better prices with Arnold Clark, so I booked directly with them after talking to my Scottish co-worker who reassured me they were very reputable.
We are going to Scotland in July. Car rental prices are really high, and some of the companies are already out of cars.
We’re going to Hawaii this fall, and car rental prices there are really high too. I think its the shortage of new cars at the moment driving the pricing.
For Scotland, i ended up with a car from Avis, but it was very expensive. I’m going to keep looking and hoping for a better price. Hope you find a better price than I have so far.
Best regards,
Bioboy
