Tip 3: Book with a consolidator if language can be a problem
We’re usually pretty wary of the middle man whenever it comes to making transactions. However, Julie and I can attest to the value of having a rental car consolidator like Auto Europe because in one particular incident, they saved our 2015 Spain trip.
Before we get into how we were rescued by them, let’s first get into what a car rental consolidator does. First, they are wholesalers who can consolidate rentals and negotiate better rates than individuals doing one-off hires. They also have the means to price compare from a bunch of different car rental agencies (including the major carriers that we’ve gone with in the past like Europcar, Hertz, etc.) and cherry pick the ones with the best rates, then pass the savings directly to us. This process is transparent to us because they’ve already booked on our behalf. Now since we’re not doing the booking directly, we have to make sure we understood the terms like what’s covered in the insurance, distance limitations, one-way dropoff fees, and other things (though we have to do that anyways when we rent directly with the rental agency). We’ll get into the insurance and rental terms later in this article in Lesson 7.
Second, the consolidator is available by phone toll-free 24/7. This means that whenever we have to deal with the rental car agency over some misunderstanding or when we get in trouble for some reason, we would have someone to talk to (in a language we’re fluent in like English) to work out the problem. It’s this aspect about having a consolidator like Auto Europe that saved us on our Spain trip. The reason why was because our ferry from Tangier-MED, Morocco to Algeciras, Spain was delayed well over an hour. So when we finally arrived at the Europcar in Algeciras to pick up the long-term rental car hire, the office was closed for the weekend starting at 2pm (we had showed up probably at about 2:15pm). There was no live person to talk to, nobody at the office, and everything was in Spanish (and we weren’t fluent enough to handle these types of situations efficiently).
Luckily, we had booked with Auto Europe so when Julie made her smart phone call toll free to them, she spoke to a live person in Texas (USA), who then worked behind the scenes to get us an equivalent rental car at no extra cost near the train station in Malaga, Spain. The only catch was that we had to hire a taxi to go the two hours to that location in Malaga (that costed us around 110 euros), but at least we were able to salvage our trip even though the Spain part of our trip started about 4 hours later and a couple hundred euros pricier than we had expected.
Since that incident, we’re quite convinced of the virtues of going with a consolidator, especially in places where the language barrier can be an issue. Even for trips where english is widely spoken, the consolidator can help for those times when the remote rental car offices have limited hours and we find ourselves on the wrong end of their opening hours. That said, we’ve only dealt with consolidators who specialize in Europe. They wouldn’t have helped us in our Patagonia trip in 2007 that we discussed in Lesson 1.
Visitor Comments:
Got something you'd like to share or say to keep the conversation going? Feel free to leave a comment below...No users have replied to the content on this page
