Car Hire in UK - save using .co.uk site

Wonderwoman

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I have just booked a car through Hertz, collecting in Gatwick on Thursday for a weeks hire.
I originally checked through the hertz.ie site and was quoted 259 euro for a mid size car. When I went back in to check prices again I went in through the hertz.co.uk site and was quoted 148GBP, which is approx 189 euro. That is a big price difference!

I have heard of a similar story with the ferry companies re: booking but with price differentials of 20 euro or so. Can't believe there is that much of a price difference for same company for the same car!

Just thought I would share. :)
 
sorry for resurrecting the dead here but when i tried to use the UK site the address for country could not be changed from the united kingdom (this was for my credit card details) the irish site was €20 more for the exact same car. anyone found a way around this?
 
were you trying to hire a car in the uk or in ireland? if in ireland then its likely you will be redirected to irish site. as you see from wonderwomans post, she was renting in uk. if renting in uk try carjet.co.uk
 
it was the uk i was trying to hire the car in (newcastle for the heinekin cup final) and the credit card page had a defaulted UK selected in the country option which could not be changed.

i ended up going through the ryanair site which saved me a few quid on the irish site price but still more than the uk price, was getting nervous as the other sites i had tried had no availability for newcastle so went ahead and booked it.

btw the carjet site was more expensive than ryanair/hertz
 
Similar story to previous posters, I am going Ryanair to the UK soon and followed the Hertz link to check out car rental. It defaults to say country of residence is UK and gives the price for a Mondeo as £94 for 5 days. I changed the country of residence to Ireland - lo and behold, the price is now €235. Over twice the price!

Before I book, I'm just wondering if I go ahead and book giving my country of residence as the UK, will they refuse to rent me the car when I go to pick it up?
 
Its a no brainer. Just say your country of residence is the U.K.The desk where you pick up the car keys won`t query this.
 
Its a no brainer. Just say your country of residence is the U.K.The desk where you pick up the car keys won`t query this.
All well in good saying this. But on the terms and conditions on a lot of the .uk sites it actually states that you must be a resident of the UK.
So God forbid the OP has an accident then her/his insurance cover may not in fact cover it.
 
Well you are resident there while you are driving the car around there.You may or may not have come to live permanently in the u.k.
If the insurance company does not want to pay up on that point,they can always get some excuse not to pay up.
I always pay the minimum fare. I take it you pay the extra insurance in case of an accident.
 
Car hire companies operate and yield in the same way as airlines, and they pitch their pricing according to the demand in the country of booking.. so if there is a scarcity of Irish residents booking from Ireland in a certain location and the company wants to stimulate that market , it might make it's rates cheaper than those for UK residents.. or vice versa.. it's always worth looking around and trying different combinations e.g. a .ie site, .com site a co.uk a .fr and so on.. there's almost no chance that the car hire desk will refuse to homour a rate based on country of residence in Europe. EXCEPT people renting in the US , on US rates wont have same insurance coverage that US residents would have.
 
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