When I was in Scotland last year, I rented a car for about 16 days through Celtic Legend, who works with Arnold Clark to provide rental cars. I was very happy with the experience and it was nice that I didn’t have to pay anything upfront until I picked up the car. The whole procedure went splendidly; so much so that this year, when I needed to rent a car for a portion of my trip in England, I turned to Celtic Legend again and reserved a car rental through Arnold Clark for £810. The car was a subcompact with a manual transmission, as the automatic was much pricer. Everything was confirmed, and I’ve just been waiting on my trip, which happens in mid March.
Today, however, I happened to go to the Arnold Clark website, because I was looking for information about their hours for returning my rental car. I noticed that an offer for a quote, so I thought I would just check it out and see what happened. Imagine my surprise when I was quoted a rate of £649 for an automatic transmission for the same exact period of time I had gotten before. The car is the same size. Everything is exactly the same except that the price is £160 cheaper and I have an automatic. Part of that cost was a £50 charge for the drop off fee, as I am returning it in a different city than where I picked it up.
I am posting this because I know there are a lot of people out there that love Celtic Legend, as do I. However, it may be worth it to go directly to the rental agency. It is also possible, of course, that the period of time contributed to the rate change, so it may not be entirely Arnold Clark’s doing, but it's still worth checking out.
The only real difference is that I had to pay for it upfront, but for an extra £5, I was able to get a cancellation clause in it.
I think the only other difference is that Celtic Legend gives you a free sat nav device and Arnold Clark charges a fee for that (not much, though). Since I use Google maps for GPS, however, I have no need of one.