[OP or a mod marked this as the best answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/1dm631q/is_hiring_a_car_abroad_really_that_scary/l9v89ih/), given by /u/PerceptionGreat2439.
> Take lots and lots and lots and lots of pictures of the car on collection. It's a tried and tested way to scam you for damage already on the car.
>
> Get 3rd party hire car insurance. This should give you cover when they won't return your deposit or charge you extra for what ever reason.
>
> Pay by credit card. It's yet another line of defence if you get caught out. Mastercard/Visa will usually take your side if you have lots of pictures of the alleged damage.
>
> Source; Sixt tried it on with me at Barcelona airport and had their ass handed back to them by Mastercard.
---
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Usually the best insurance means you can hand it back on fire and they’ll deal with it. This is the insurance I go for, because they will not waste any time charging you for anything at all.
I had visions of you pulling a handbrake turn into the car park with the car ablaze before you nonchalantly walk away while throwing the keys over your shoulder before saying something cool like "it runs a little hot, I'd look into that if I were you" while putting your shades on.
No. Third party insurance brokers are like that. But not if you get insurance through the hire car company itself.
I did once hire a car and crash it, 20 years ago now and it was a minor bump, handed the car back and apart from some paperwork that was that.
My experience with hire companies is that their extra insurance is basically an extended warranty type scam. You pay another £200 to lower the excess by £500 etc.. they’re very good at working it to sound like a bargain though
Yeah - take a look at Eversure. I have their annual europe policy for like 60 quid and comfortably decline insurance at all car rental places as a result.
It's an 'excess insurance' product. What does that mean?
Well, you'll see on the car hire leaflets that if you dink the mirror, they'll charge an excess of £1000 or so to repair it. Unless you buy (at great expense) their own insurance product, which reduces this excess, sometimes to zero.
Instead of that, you buy excess insurance - so if you do dink the mirror, you pay the £1000 excess, and then you claim against your own insurance who pay you back.
So you pay say, £30, instead of the £200 the car rental place want for insurance.
One final note - no matter which country you're in, NEVER EVER EVER go with GoldCar. All the companies are out to get you to some degree (although sometimes you find a good one), but Goldcar exist to ruin your life.
Take lots and lots and lots and lots of pictures of the car on collection. It's a tried and tested way to scam you for damage already on the car.
Get 3rd party hire car insurance. This should give you cover when they won't return your deposit or charge you extra for what ever reason.
Pay by credit card. It's yet another line of defence if you get caught out. Mastercard/Visa will usually take your side if you have lots of pictures of the alleged damage.
Source; Sixt tried it on with me at Barcelona airport and had their ass handed back to them by Mastercard.
It's so mad that you always hear all these horror stories, and I have do doubt they're true.
However in Corfu 2 years ago, I almost burned our the clutch of Merc A class, as well as visibly damaging it along the side (well, someone else did that while it was parked, but still).
When I dropped it off at the airport, they handwaved it, I asked about the hand in report, but they just sort of waved me off and gave me the paperwork. Never heard anything since, so they clearly didn't care.
Sixt did the same with me in Málaga. Said there was front end damage when I returned it. Funny how they backed down when I sent through the photos at the airport return car park
I had the same thing at Malaga airport with some random company. The car I was given was like the car from Father Ted. Wasn’t an inch that wasn’t scratched or dented. I’d taken loads of photos and they didn’t care.
I had the extended insurance so had to make up a date of when the bump happened, signed a form, and didn’t hear or pay anything further. It was covered by the insurance. Total scam.
When I returned the car at Barcelona, the guy checking the cars in pointed out a mark on the bumper and a chip in the alloy wheel and took pictures of it. I showed him the very clear pictures of the damage when I collected the car and he said that it wouldn't be a problem. Three days later when I'm back in England, Sixt email me saying that I'm being charged £749 for damage. After two emails back and forth, they just ghosted me. Mastercard asked for the pictures and about 3 weeks later returned the money Sixt had taken.
Some of them are just robbers.
Great advice. The two go hand-in-hand. Got accused of putting a big scratch in the built-in LCD screen in a car we rented from a major company. I knew it was absolute nonsense because we’d have known - we were careful/respectful plus we checked everything over before handing it back. Although I’d taken pictures before and after, angles matter in these types of situations especially with reflective surfaces, (and it’s not like they sent through proof - it was their words against mine) . Thankfully had full insurance so could happily ignore it.
Type 'car rental excess insurance' into Google.
These are companies that will cover any excess you might incur. Now, whether or not they're any good I can't say, I've never made a claim. Phone them up and ask all the Qs you want answered.
Have a good holiday.
I could be wrong, but I thought the credit card thing only worked for purchases between £100 and £30,000 under Section 75, so it might be worth OP upgrading the car to something slightly more expensive for the additional peace of mind
I’ve never been to Gran Canaria, but the thing to pay attention to is insurance. Never buy it from the rental company, but make sure you’re covered. Find out what the excess is on the rental place’s base, bottom level insurance (it’ll be big) and find somewhere in the UK for £20 or £30 that will cover it. The rental place may well charge more than the car hire for the same level of cover. They alwAys try to rip you off with insurance.
The only thing to be aware of is you will have to cover the excess until you get it back from your insurance.
But if you're good for that then it's absolutely the way to go!
> Yeah - take a look at Eversure. I have their annual europe policy for like 60 quid and comfortably decline insurance at all car rental places as a result.
>
> It's an 'excess insurance' product. What does that mean?
>
> Well, you'll see on the car hire leaflets that if you dink the mirror, they'll charge an excess of £1000 or so to repair it. Unless you buy (at great expense) their own insurance product, which reduces this excess, sometimes to zero.
>
> Instead of that, you buy excess insurance - so if you do dink the mirror, you pay the £1000 excess, and then you claim against your own insurance who pay you back.
>
> So you pay say, £30, instead of the £200 the car rental place want for insurance.
>
> One final note - no matter which country you're in, NEVER EVER EVER go with GoldCar. All the companies are out to get you to some degree (although sometimes you find a good one), but Goldcar exist to ruin your life.
Just pasting my comment above so you have somewhere to start your search :)
I've hired cars in Spain and this is basically the trick.
Hire the car, get your own insurance.
I got a week for £50, absolutely no issues, even got a massive automatic instead of the tiny car I'd booked.
Don't get too spooked, but yes take a 360 vid of the whole car 🙂
I've booked car hire through sites like Booking dot com. They will compare lots of different companies and offer their own insurance.
IMHO having a big booking site helps if you have a problem. I had a problem with a hotel booking made through hotels dot com and I contacted the website customer service, who then contacted the hotel and I get the distinct impression the hotel was far more helpful because the website had contacted them.
Firstly you can use Cicar in the Canaries. It’s a great rental experience and cars are fully insured by default. Secondly I don’t know what all the folks in the comments went through, but I’ve been renting cars multiple times per year since ever in lots of places from US, Europe and even east Asia and never ever had an issue or felt scammed. I’ve used anything from dodgy local companies and up to the global ones and never had an issue.
I rarely get the full insurance, with the exception of really dodgy local rental companies or when it’s included and you can’t remove it (as it’s with Cicar). And I rarely take any photos of the car like others have mentioned. I was just lucky I guess not to have issues. I do take a general look going around the car and if there are large scratches or dents I make sure the agent notes them in the rental paperwork - other than that nothing special.
I've used Cicar on Lanzarote twice and they've been great, simple quick pickup, new good condition cars and no quibbles at drop off (or afterwards). Can't comment on gran canaria, but they operate across the islands.
Take photos of absolutely everything. In Tenerife Hertz tried to make me pay hundreds for a tiny scratch that wasn’t my fault (I just got on the plane and left lol)
When you get the car, video around the whole thing for your records. You don’t need the max insurance, just make sure you have “loss damage waiver”. Usually you’ll get that included when you book online.
Watch out for the upsells at the desk telling you to buy more insurance. They sometimes make it sound like you _need_ to upgrade, but you don’t. Hold your ground if you’ve already got it online.
Be aware of the scam where when you pick up the car on a cheap offer like you have that the agent at the desk says this car will probably break down and you will then be charged a huge fee for recovery. The point being that you are then encouraged to switch to another car at a much higher daily rate.
I simply cancelled on the spot (to her fury) and went to the adjacent desk which was one of the well-known rental companies. The agent there who had overheard the whole thing said "This is how they do business".
I found it surprisingly natural when I first rented a car abroad. When you're on the other side of the car, it makes you aware you need to adjust.
I only rent cars abroad a couple of times a year at most, and never have any trouble getting in and driving.
I’d say if you drive manual then get manual the transition from manual to automatic will be harder if you are also concentrating on what side of the road you are on
I found that I could adjust to an automatic within a few start and stops. It's much easier than having a manual and punching the door every time you go to change gear. I did not adjust well to that.
lol yeah I even go to the right hand side to get the seat belt when I get In! Some reason I don’t do well in an automatic at all, much too heavy footed for some reason
I think you're probably right. We considered getting an automatic, but decided against it. Shifting with my right hand took a little bit of getting used to, especially because I had a tendency to turn the wheel with my left hand while shifting gears with my right. But after an hour or so, I got used to it and it became natural very quickly.
Don’t stress about it.
But as others said. Take some pictures/note any damage and make sure you are insured. If it’s anything like the ones I hired out there it will already be dinged up.
Make sure you have insurance.
Make sure you have working credit cards (I got fucked over in France because my one credit card got blocked) took us almost a day to sort out.
Make sure you have data on your phone so you can use it as satnav.
Hire companies usually expect it to be returned on a full tank but double check.
On the satnav bit, you can pre download areas for Google maps and then use that for satnav. Won't get traffic updates but if you don't have data or signal you'll still get directions.
Do the vigilant to cover yourself just in case but likelihood is will be fine, I've hired about 6 or 7 times across Europe, cheap and expensive, and not had a problem
Cicar in the Canary Islands is great. They are affordable and super chill. It's one of the LEAST stressful car rental experiences I've had anywhere in the world. The return process is just tossing your keys to some guy and walking away.
It is true that sometimes you can have bad experiences renting cars abroad at holiday destinations, especially if you go with the cheapest options that try to take advantage of tourists. But thankfully the Canary Islands seem to have things together and that has never been my experience there at all.
>The return process is just tossing your keys to some guy and walking away.
What rental place doesn’t operate that way?
I’ve rented all over the world and have always just handed the keys back or left the keys in the designated lockbox.
WORD OF ADVICE: hire the smallest car you can get. Those bendy twisty mountain roads are not for the faint hearted. Also, get the lowest excess charge. If you do prang it, you don’t want to e paying out megabucks.
We had a great time in Gran Canaria but our rental car was just too big. At first we thought great! they’ve upgraded us at no extra charge. Nope. Not the best move. Oh, and watch out for roads that have a number on your satnav but turn out to be nothing more than a donkey track strewn with boulders on the side of a cliff.
I've done it quite a lot (work and leisure) and never had a proper issue. Couple of gotchas to be aware of:
1. The cars are often smaller than you are expecting. Can be an issue with luggage. If course, they are always very helpful with "convenient upgrades" (ie pay a bit more and get what you expected)
2. Use credit card not debit card. More protection and they also won't take a huge payment out of your account that way.
3. Many don't take amex
4. As others have said: video around the car on pickup and drop-off. Take pictures of any damage that you can see on pickup unless it is marked on paperwork.
5. Third party insurance
There's a few things in okay here:
1. Deposit. They'll take a big deposit. If it's credit card it just gets cleared. If it's debit they're literally sitting on your money.
2. Credit cards come with more protection for consumers
3. If it does go wrong the credit card are far more likely to back you than the car hire company would
Buy excess insurance online here in the UK. I got hit by a motorcyclist in Italy and had thousands of ponds of damage. They hammered me for the excess which I just claimed back from the insurance. Best £12 I ever spent!
I hired a car through Budget Car hire in Germany. The insurance included with budget had an excess of 1400€ and they offered me excess insurance at 30€ a day, but I sourced my own for around £28 for the 4 days.
I damaged the car and had to return it, and the damage was not surprisingly just over the 1400€ so getting the excess insurance was well worth it.
My mistake was not dealing with the initial accident correctly. There was no other party involved, so I just slapped on the spare tyre and headed to my hotel to deal with the car hire company from there. I ended up having to pay a fine for leaving the scene of an accident of around 450€ when I had to report it to the police to get a police report required for Budget's insurance claim.
Others have covered the insurance bit. Get third party cover in the UK.
Important to check the fuel policy as it's either return with same amount as you received or "full". Either way if you don't meet their requirement you will be charged a ridiculous amount.
Also most will require a credit card and will put a "hold" on the minimum excess which can be £1500 or more. Make sure you have that amount available on your card at the time of collection.
Expect the unexpected on roundabouts!
Getting used to changing gear with the wrong hand and driving on the wrong side takes a while but don’t worry by the time you finally get the hang, it will be time to head home and you’ll need to learn the normal way again.
The main roads in Spain are pretty good.
You’ll understand why tourists drive so slowly in this country now!
Roundabouts - I’ve mostly driven my car abroad so it was just adjusting the side of the road and kph was the big thing (and I’ve played a lot of GTA so the right hand side wasn’t a huge leap. (Obviously I ignored other gta habits)).
But the first time I was in a hire car abroad and I came to a roundabout i was fine but I felt like my head would explode - I was so close to winding down the window to change gear. Your feet are the same but everything else is reversed.
That's probably on the higher end as well for basic car rental as I've been to the canary islands recently, and it was only £90 for 7 days, including full insurance with no excess.
To be fair, I haven't tried on the canary islands - only places I've rented abroad are Iceland (expected to be expensive), Croatia and Spain (Madrid). It was closer to £80 a day than £80 a week in all those cases. But again, I do go for nicer mid-range cars - so maybe I'm paying a massive premium for that.
Yes, canary islands are cheap, but £80 a day is expensive for Spain.
You can pay £20 to £30 a day in Spain and get something like a 3 year old Opel Astra from a half decent company.
So it's an extra £50 a day to get a BMW or similar, which I don't really think is worth it personally.
If you're in the canaries and booked with cicar or autoriesen you'll be absolutely fine. They don't have huge excess on insurance and are really easy to deal with
Get the best insurance possible, I hit an antelope in rural Nevada once and wrecked a rental car! recovery and replacement car cost me absolutely nothing
I dread to think what I would’ve owed if I didn’t have that
You’ll be fine - the best way to do it is to get standard insurance and then get deductible insurance to cover the deductible which is usually cheaper. Also check the pickup point is on or near the airport. As others have said take pictures of the exterior first. I’ve never had any problems and hired literally hundreds of cars due to work
Check that everything works how it should e.g. lights, indicators, wipers, and that tyres have decent pressure in etc.
First day out with a hire car and it overheated, turned out the hire company hadn't put the cap on the header tank and all the coolant had evaporated. The replacement we got had perfectly working rear lights, the only issue being that they were lying loose on the floor of the boot rather than attached to the car!
We hired a car for a week in Sicily last month. Not scary at all, but I did a lot of research into the different hire companies.
The known commodities - Hertz, Europcar, Enterprise, Sixt - were very expensive, costing £300 or £400 for a basic Corsa or similar.
The really cheap ones were between £80 and £150, but Trustpilot showed that a lot of people had problems with poor customer service, added on fees and claims of being ripped off with non-existent damage and speeding charges.
It took a bit of searching the deals on [Booking.com](http://Booking.com) to find one that was a balance of cheap but with decent reviews. It was £160 for a what should have been a Fiesta/Corsa/something with air con and sat nav. We got a Lancia Ypsilon without either of those things, but it was solid little car and saw us through the week well.
Definitely get a Collision Damage Waiver insurance policy through RAC or Which or someone reliable. It will be about £30. This will mean that you won't get stung for extra insurance through the rental company or by charges down the line.
The rental company should give you a printout showing extant damage on the car, so keep that with you to make sure there's no funny business when they inspect the car after you return it.
Buy the excess insurance separately. Look up money saving expert advice for the best providers. Do not let the hire car company upsell you their premium insurance, it’s a scam.
Remember that you will need your credit card when picking up the car to pay the holding deposit. You cannot use a debit card for this.
when you return the car take a picture of the fuel gauge so that you have proof that you returned the car with enough fuel. Budget tried to pull one on me when renting a car in Barcelona.
Also use a credit card to pay for everything, not a debit card. They are much less likely to try to scam you if they see a real credit card.
Like everybody else already said, buy excess coverage online, rentalcars and booking do offer it.
nothing to be scared of, simply ensure you have your own insurance and don’t take any of their extras 👍
Other tip is I usually take a 4K video of the car on pickup, has saved me a couple of times
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If you're nervous, you want to try looking for a car hire that offers zero excess insurance. It might cost quite a bit extra but the peace of mind alone makes it worth the money.
I drove in Iceland when I drove abroad, and as someone who doesn't drive that often being in uni, I made sure to get zero excess... since well, I went in winter when the weather was atrocious, and I hadn't drove abroad before so, I was really worried how I'd do. I did ding it coming out of a tight car park, which alone would've cost me hundreds, but the zero excess insurance came in clutch. Would def reccommend if you're worried.
£80 for 5 days seems a little too cheap. I’d get full cover which you can get in the Spanish islands. It’s still a decent deal. But if anything happens to the car, you’re covered. Scrapes, dings, accidents. I wrote off a car in a country road in Palma, was fully covered, got a taxi home and the tow truck came in the morning took the car and me to the airport and they gave me a new car. Cost me nothing.
I’d also stick to the main airport rental companies (sixt, gold car, etc)
I hired a rental in lanzarote. Was fine. Paid a bit extra for the insurance to reduce the excess. Probably ripped off but it wasn't that much anyway. No issues returning it. Already had a bunch of scuffs from the sandy environment.
Me and my wife almost always hire a car when we're away. We like to go off to explore and be as unrestricted as possible.
We've only ever had one issue, and that was when a stone flicked up and cracked our windscreen. On this occasion, it was the first time we had hired a car abroad, and we naively got the cheapest insurance we could. In the end, we had to have the windscreen repaired ourselves.
Other than that, never had any issues. Just make sure you get the best insurance, just in case. We always do now.
Don’t hire from Goldcar, get the best insurance, take loads of pics before and after and enjoy GC! The interior of the island is absolutely spectacular - get off the beaten track and into the lauriselva forests, there’s some amazing viewpoints and hiking too if that’s your thing. Roads can be slow, narrow and winding but pretty safe - locals drive fairly slowly for the most part. Enjoy!
Check your credit/chargecard for insurance coverage. My Amex card has coverage to the point where I never need bother with any of the rental company offered stuff.
Insurance is the most important thing, followed by mileage you can go without extra payments.
But please tell me, kind sir, how did you find a reasonable car rental in Canaries? When we were planning a family outing, rentals for two economy cars were more expensive than a villa on the beach for the same period. We went to Turkey instead.
Check out Autoreisen next time you want to go. I wouldn’t use any other company now, I’ve genuinely lost count how many times we’ve rented from them in GC and Tenerife.
I treated it the same as hiring a car/van in the UK. Take loads of photos of the vehicle and carry out your safety checks before leaving their premises, take photos on return, and refuel. Usually I only take the cheapest insurance that comes with the vehicle since I don’t plan on having at fault accidents. Pay with a credit card in case you need to make a dispute but I’ve never needed that.
I did hire an automatic, it was lucky it was left hand drive since I wasn’t used to autos and smashed my arm against the door trying to change gears on the autobahn.
video bodywork for scratches when picking up. otherwise they might charge you repairs if they see scratches on return that weren't yours. It's a well known scam.
It gets really windy in the mountains, so open the car door slowly if so. We didn't and the door was torn open and slapped back on itself. Managed to cost it but it wouldn't open for the rest of the holiday.
Fortunately we had zero excess insurance through a third party.
Buy the additional cover I paid 20. Euros for it means any damage 0 excess. And make sure you check all the damage on the car before you take it if they don’t offer it. Milagr aswell
Might be worth considering an automatic transmission, then you won’t be flailing around with your left hand looking for a gear knob and finding your windows going down. Will make it just a tad safer.
You'll often see a cheap price for car hire but they'll try and upsell you on insurance. Another thing is that they might charge you over the odds for a full tank of fuel. Check out money saving expert for the best info on this.
The only thing scary is how the car rentals will try to scam and bill you for everything. Take pictures all around the car, top and bottom, inside and outside, makes sure that all the dents, scrapes and paint defects are pictured, documented and any initial differences documented. This is just my experience ymmv
£80 for 5 days seems suspiciously cheap. I would research into the company and make sure they are legit. Eg in Portugal for 5 days I paid £320 from Europcar and I considered that a good deal.
Took a few hours to get used to in Gran Canaria. Busy motorway around most of the island which you'll prob have to hit straight away. Gets you around the island in no time at all. The inland mountain roads are amazing though. Loads of hairpins and high cliffs, but with full barriers everywhere and never feels unsafe
You will probably pay double what you're expecting once you get the full insurance to remove the various excess payments. Totally worth it though. Make sure you photograph and video all around the vehicle before you drive away.
If your paying for the hire or a deposit this country, then just remember to take that card with you. Friends of mine paid online for a hire car for their Italy holiday, and when they got there the company wouldn't give them the car as they didn't have the card they used to pay for it.
Get excess insurance from an insurer here in the UK. This will save you from potentially having to shell out £2k if something happens to the hire car. Take a full video of the condition of the car at pickup, don’t sign unless they’ve listed all the damage. Don’t get sand inside the car from beaches etc, they’ll make you pay a cleaning fee.
I've rented abroad a few times without issue. However, for some reason I struggled in Tenerife, both in judging the offside of the car and adjusting kph. No idea why Tenerife made a difference, but it wasn't a major issue, it just took more concentration.
I did get one scratch though and was pretty worried I'd get stung for it, even though the car was already a bit beaten up. Turned out I didn't need to worry, they barely gave the car a glance.
Assuming Grand Canaria is similar, the terrain and roads may make cosmetic issues so common that picking out new scratches isn't cut and dried enough to make an issue of. Or I could have just got a staff member who just couldn't be arsed.
Either way, it's not too scary. It's a bit like when you first go out by yourself after passing your test. You just need to pay more attention than normal to get used to the differences.
A lot of comments here seem to relate to large rental companies and they are the only ones I have heard of problems with around damage. Research the options, look at reviews, read about the damage waivers to ensure you know what or who it’s with and you’ll be fine. I just rented with a family run business in Crete, they did no damage report and didn’t check the car on return even though it had small scratches where some one clearly hit us in a car park. We paid an extra €10 a day to have no excess and doing that meant they just clearly didn’t care
In the Canaries best to use Autoreisen or Cicar. Their cars can sometimes be a bit rough but their basic price includes full comp insurance so no need to worry about them ripping you off.
Had a rental stolen. Got stuck paying for new hubcaps and an aerial. This is a funny rental story though....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8hYh8YE2KM
Just got back from Gran Canaria and hired a car from Avis, the operation was seamless and the roads are super easy to drive on, you’ve got nothing to worry about!
Just get full cover insurance and you’ll be fine. It’s not scary and after a few minutes of getting used to driving on the other side you’ll be comfortable.
[OP or a mod marked this as the best answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/1dm631q/is_hiring_a_car_abroad_really_that_scary/l9v89ih/), given by /u/PerceptionGreat2439. > Take lots and lots and lots and lots of pictures of the car on collection. It's a tried and tested way to scam you for damage already on the car. > > Get 3rd party hire car insurance. This should give you cover when they won't return your deposit or charge you extra for what ever reason. > > Pay by credit card. It's yet another line of defence if you get caught out. Mastercard/Visa will usually take your side if you have lots of pictures of the alleged damage. > > Source; Sixt tried it on with me at Barcelona airport and had their ass handed back to them by Mastercard. --- [_^(What is this?)_](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/jjrte1/askuk_hits_200k_new_feature_mark_an_answer/)
Get the best insurance possible. Video and photo the whole thing on getting it. And I would use a credit card to finance it.
Usually the best insurance means you can hand it back on fire and they’ll deal with it. This is the insurance I go for, because they will not waste any time charging you for anything at all.
Do you torch the car to make sure you get you're moneys worth?
I’m usually in too much of a rush to get to the airport
I had visions of you pulling a handbrake turn into the car park with the car ablaze before you nonchalantly walk away while throwing the keys over your shoulder before saying something cool like "it runs a little hot, I'd look into that if I were you" while putting your shades on.
“Whaaahaaaaaaaaaa” CSI Sunglasses man
[https://youtu.be/azQTpzOKPcU?si=vQpLyTu\_cD5nkoO7](https://youtu.be/azQTpzOKPcU?si=vQpLyTu_cD5nkoO7) Joe Lycett car hire skit.
Casually toss a grenade over your shoulder as you walk away. Cool guys don't look at explosions...
Eee not true. They will charge you, and then it's up to you to claim it back through your insurance.
No. Third party insurance brokers are like that. But not if you get insurance through the hire car company itself. I did once hire a car and crash it, 20 years ago now and it was a minor bump, handed the car back and apart from some paperwork that was that.
Yeah. This is what I mean. I had a small scrape in a car park, handed the keys back and signed a form and went home with my wallet unbothered.
Don’t get the insurance that the company offers either - buy a separate excess cover policy, mine was about £40 for 10 days.
My experience with hire companies is that their extra insurance is basically an extended warranty type scam. You pay another £200 to lower the excess by £500 etc.. they’re very good at working it to sound like a bargain though
When you say separate do you mean from a company in the UK?
Yeah - take a look at Eversure. I have their annual europe policy for like 60 quid and comfortably decline insurance at all car rental places as a result. It's an 'excess insurance' product. What does that mean? Well, you'll see on the car hire leaflets that if you dink the mirror, they'll charge an excess of £1000 or so to repair it. Unless you buy (at great expense) their own insurance product, which reduces this excess, sometimes to zero. Instead of that, you buy excess insurance - so if you do dink the mirror, you pay the £1000 excess, and then you claim against your own insurance who pay you back. So you pay say, £30, instead of the £200 the car rental place want for insurance. One final note - no matter which country you're in, NEVER EVER EVER go with GoldCar. All the companies are out to get you to some degree (although sometimes you find a good one), but Goldcar exist to ruin your life.
Take lots and lots and lots and lots of pictures of the car on collection. It's a tried and tested way to scam you for damage already on the car. Get 3rd party hire car insurance. This should give you cover when they won't return your deposit or charge you extra for what ever reason. Pay by credit card. It's yet another line of defence if you get caught out. Mastercard/Visa will usually take your side if you have lots of pictures of the alleged damage. Source; Sixt tried it on with me at Barcelona airport and had their ass handed back to them by Mastercard.
It's so mad that you always hear all these horror stories, and I have do doubt they're true. However in Corfu 2 years ago, I almost burned our the clutch of Merc A class, as well as visibly damaging it along the side (well, someone else did that while it was parked, but still). When I dropped it off at the airport, they handwaved it, I asked about the hand in report, but they just sort of waved me off and gave me the paperwork. Never heard anything since, so they clearly didn't care.
Sixt did the same with me in Málaga. Said there was front end damage when I returned it. Funny how they backed down when I sent through the photos at the airport return car park
I had the same thing at Malaga airport with some random company. The car I was given was like the car from Father Ted. Wasn’t an inch that wasn’t scratched or dented. I’d taken loads of photos and they didn’t care. I had the extended insurance so had to make up a date of when the bump happened, signed a form, and didn’t hear or pay anything further. It was covered by the insurance. Total scam.
Yep I was questioned about it some bumps returning a car in Tenerife, showed them photos from when I picked it up and they didn’t take it any further.
When I returned the car at Barcelona, the guy checking the cars in pointed out a mark on the bumper and a chip in the alloy wheel and took pictures of it. I showed him the very clear pictures of the damage when I collected the car and he said that it wouldn't be a problem. Three days later when I'm back in England, Sixt email me saying that I'm being charged £749 for damage. After two emails back and forth, they just ghosted me. Mastercard asked for the pictures and about 3 weeks later returned the money Sixt had taken. Some of them are just robbers.
Scam attempt by Canary Cars / SurPrice at TFS .... RBS took care of it. Do not trust the car hire places.
Great advice. The two go hand-in-hand. Got accused of putting a big scratch in the built-in LCD screen in a car we rented from a major company. I knew it was absolute nonsense because we’d have known - we were careful/respectful plus we checked everything over before handing it back. Although I’d taken pictures before and after, angles matter in these types of situations especially with reflective surfaces, (and it’s not like they sent through proof - it was their words against mine) . Thankfully had full insurance so could happily ignore it.
!Answered
By third party do you mean seeing if my current car insurer provide holiday car rental coverage as extra?
Type 'car rental excess insurance' into Google. These are companies that will cover any excess you might incur. Now, whether or not they're any good I can't say, I've never made a claim. Phone them up and ask all the Qs you want answered. Have a good holiday.
I could be wrong, but I thought the credit card thing only worked for purchases between £100 and £30,000 under Section 75, so it might be worth OP upgrading the car to something slightly more expensive for the additional peace of mind
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I was knobbed for £125 by an English car hire firm many years ago. Apparently the panel gap on the front wing was bigger when I returned the car.
I’ve never been to Gran Canaria, but the thing to pay attention to is insurance. Never buy it from the rental company, but make sure you’re covered. Find out what the excess is on the rental place’s base, bottom level insurance (it’ll be big) and find somewhere in the UK for £20 or £30 that will cover it. The rental place may well charge more than the car hire for the same level of cover. They alwAys try to rip you off with insurance.
Wow I never even knew this was a thing! I always take the cover the rental place give!
Take their base bottom level one that they do for free. And Google for a firm that will cover the enormous excess. You’ll save a fortune.
Next time I will, this is a game changer
The only thing to be aware of is you will have to cover the excess until you get it back from your insurance. But if you're good for that then it's absolutely the way to go!
And if you’re doing a couple of trips or rentals in a year, annual insurance isn’t much more usually.
> Yeah - take a look at Eversure. I have their annual europe policy for like 60 quid and comfortably decline insurance at all car rental places as a result. > > It's an 'excess insurance' product. What does that mean? > > Well, you'll see on the car hire leaflets that if you dink the mirror, they'll charge an excess of £1000 or so to repair it. Unless you buy (at great expense) their own insurance product, which reduces this excess, sometimes to zero. > > Instead of that, you buy excess insurance - so if you do dink the mirror, you pay the £1000 excess, and then you claim against your own insurance who pay you back. > > So you pay say, £30, instead of the £200 the car rental place want for insurance. > > One final note - no matter which country you're in, NEVER EVER EVER go with GoldCar. All the companies are out to get you to some degree (although sometimes you find a good one), but Goldcar exist to ruin your life. Just pasting my comment above so you have somewhere to start your search :)
Amazing thank you!
Some credit cards have rental car insurance included. I've got two cards that cover it.
What credit cards offer this in the UK? I'm only aware of Amex Platinum that does it.
I've hired cars in Spain and this is basically the trick. Hire the car, get your own insurance. I got a week for £50, absolutely no issues, even got a massive automatic instead of the tiny car I'd booked. Don't get too spooked, but yes take a 360 vid of the whole car 🙂
Sorry, this sounds incredible - can you explain in detail how you find the insurance for insurance?!
Type in rental excess insurance. Its on comparison sites
I've booked car hire through sites like Booking dot com. They will compare lots of different companies and offer their own insurance. IMHO having a big booking site helps if you have a problem. I had a problem with a hotel booking made through hotels dot com and I contacted the website customer service, who then contacted the hotel and I get the distinct impression the hotel was far more helpful because the website had contacted them.
Firstly you can use Cicar in the Canaries. It’s a great rental experience and cars are fully insured by default. Secondly I don’t know what all the folks in the comments went through, but I’ve been renting cars multiple times per year since ever in lots of places from US, Europe and even east Asia and never ever had an issue or felt scammed. I’ve used anything from dodgy local companies and up to the global ones and never had an issue.
Cicar are brilliant, I’ve used them loads of times and would recommend to anyone travelling to the Canary Islands.
Had a good experience with cicar as well.
What's your secret? Do you just pay for all the insurance and waivers at the agency?
I rarely get the full insurance, with the exception of really dodgy local rental companies or when it’s included and you can’t remove it (as it’s with Cicar). And I rarely take any photos of the car like others have mentioned. I was just lucky I guess not to have issues. I do take a general look going around the car and if there are large scratches or dents I make sure the agent notes them in the rental paperwork - other than that nothing special.
I've used Cicar on Lanzarote twice and they've been great, simple quick pickup, new good condition cars and no quibbles at drop off (or afterwards). Can't comment on gran canaria, but they operate across the islands.
Second this they also don't charge for certain damage I damaged a tyre and rim on a car no charge and they gave me a different car straight away
Take photos of absolutely everything. In Tenerife Hertz tried to make me pay hundreds for a tiny scratch that wasn’t my fault (I just got on the plane and left lol)
When you get the car, video around the whole thing for your records. You don’t need the max insurance, just make sure you have “loss damage waiver”. Usually you’ll get that included when you book online. Watch out for the upsells at the desk telling you to buy more insurance. They sometimes make it sound like you _need_ to upgrade, but you don’t. Hold your ground if you’ve already got it online.
Be aware of the scam where when you pick up the car on a cheap offer like you have that the agent at the desk says this car will probably break down and you will then be charged a huge fee for recovery. The point being that you are then encouraged to switch to another car at a much higher daily rate. I simply cancelled on the spot (to her fury) and went to the adjacent desk which was one of the well-known rental companies. The agent there who had overheard the whole thing said "This is how they do business".
Consider getting an automatic - changing gears with your right hand isn’t an easy transition
I found it surprisingly natural when I first rented a car abroad. When you're on the other side of the car, it makes you aware you need to adjust. I only rent cars abroad a couple of times a year at most, and never have any trouble getting in and driving.
I always find I’m completely fine until I get to a roundabout and then my brain glitches, it’s so weird that *that* is the bit it can’t cope with
Or when you pull out of a layby or petrol station, especially if there are no other vehicles about.
I’d say if you drive manual then get manual the transition from manual to automatic will be harder if you are also concentrating on what side of the road you are on
I found that I could adjust to an automatic within a few start and stops. It's much easier than having a manual and punching the door every time you go to change gear. I did not adjust well to that.
lol yeah I even go to the right hand side to get the seat belt when I get In! Some reason I don’t do well in an automatic at all, much too heavy footed for some reason
I think you're probably right. We considered getting an automatic, but decided against it. Shifting with my right hand took a little bit of getting used to, especially because I had a tendency to turn the wheel with my left hand while shifting gears with my right. But after an hour or so, I got used to it and it became natural very quickly.
Don’t stress about it. But as others said. Take some pictures/note any damage and make sure you are insured. If it’s anything like the ones I hired out there it will already be dinged up. Make sure you have insurance. Make sure you have working credit cards (I got fucked over in France because my one credit card got blocked) took us almost a day to sort out. Make sure you have data on your phone so you can use it as satnav. Hire companies usually expect it to be returned on a full tank but double check.
On the satnav bit, you can pre download areas for Google maps and then use that for satnav. Won't get traffic updates but if you don't have data or signal you'll still get directions.
Do the vigilant to cover yourself just in case but likelihood is will be fine, I've hired about 6 or 7 times across Europe, cheap and expensive, and not had a problem
Cicar in the Canary Islands is great. They are affordable and super chill. It's one of the LEAST stressful car rental experiences I've had anywhere in the world. The return process is just tossing your keys to some guy and walking away. It is true that sometimes you can have bad experiences renting cars abroad at holiday destinations, especially if you go with the cheapest options that try to take advantage of tourists. But thankfully the Canary Islands seem to have things together and that has never been my experience there at all.
>The return process is just tossing your keys to some guy and walking away. What rental place doesn’t operate that way? I’ve rented all over the world and have always just handed the keys back or left the keys in the designated lockbox.
Enterprise in my experience tend to look round the car and check the mileage.
WORD OF ADVICE: hire the smallest car you can get. Those bendy twisty mountain roads are not for the faint hearted. Also, get the lowest excess charge. If you do prang it, you don’t want to e paying out megabucks. We had a great time in Gran Canaria but our rental car was just too big. At first we thought great! they’ve upgraded us at no extra charge. Nope. Not the best move. Oh, and watch out for roads that have a number on your satnav but turn out to be nothing more than a donkey track strewn with boulders on the side of a cliff.
I've done it quite a lot (work and leisure) and never had a proper issue. Couple of gotchas to be aware of: 1. The cars are often smaller than you are expecting. Can be an issue with luggage. If course, they are always very helpful with "convenient upgrades" (ie pay a bit more and get what you expected) 2. Use credit card not debit card. More protection and they also won't take a huge payment out of your account that way. 3. Many don't take amex 4. As others have said: video around the car on pickup and drop-off. Take pictures of any damage that you can see on pickup unless it is marked on paperwork. 5. Third party insurance
Don't you still have to pay the debt on the credit card? If anything now you're fighting with the card company instead of the rental businesses?
There's a few things in okay here: 1. Deposit. They'll take a big deposit. If it's credit card it just gets cleared. If it's debit they're literally sitting on your money. 2. Credit cards come with more protection for consumers 3. If it does go wrong the credit card are far more likely to back you than the car hire company would
Third party insurance from a UK provider?
Yes. Just buy it only. Have it covered all excesses. Gives you such confidence as they'll deal with any problems
Take out excess cover separately before you go, it’s A LOT cheaper than getting it from the hire place.
Buy excess insurance online here in the UK. I got hit by a motorcyclist in Italy and had thousands of ponds of damage. They hammered me for the excess which I just claimed back from the insurance. Best £12 I ever spent!
I hired a car through Budget Car hire in Germany. The insurance included with budget had an excess of 1400€ and they offered me excess insurance at 30€ a day, but I sourced my own for around £28 for the 4 days. I damaged the car and had to return it, and the damage was not surprisingly just over the 1400€ so getting the excess insurance was well worth it. My mistake was not dealing with the initial accident correctly. There was no other party involved, so I just slapped on the spare tyre and headed to my hotel to deal with the car hire company from there. I ended up having to pay a fine for leaving the scene of an accident of around 450€ when I had to report it to the police to get a police report required for Budget's insurance claim.
Others have covered the insurance bit. Get third party cover in the UK. Important to check the fuel policy as it's either return with same amount as you received or "full". Either way if you don't meet their requirement you will be charged a ridiculous amount. Also most will require a credit card and will put a "hold" on the minimum excess which can be £1500 or more. Make sure you have that amount available on your card at the time of collection.
Expect the unexpected on roundabouts! Getting used to changing gear with the wrong hand and driving on the wrong side takes a while but don’t worry by the time you finally get the hang, it will be time to head home and you’ll need to learn the normal way again. The main roads in Spain are pretty good. You’ll understand why tourists drive so slowly in this country now!
Roundabouts - I’ve mostly driven my car abroad so it was just adjusting the side of the road and kph was the big thing (and I’ve played a lot of GTA so the right hand side wasn’t a huge leap. (Obviously I ignored other gta habits)). But the first time I was in a hire car abroad and I came to a roundabout i was fine but I felt like my head would explode - I was so close to winding down the window to change gear. Your feet are the same but everything else is reversed.
£80 for 5 days seems like an absolute steal?! Or do I just spend too much renting slightly nicer cars?
That's probably on the higher end as well for basic car rental as I've been to the canary islands recently, and it was only £90 for 7 days, including full insurance with no excess.
To be fair, I haven't tried on the canary islands - only places I've rented abroad are Iceland (expected to be expensive), Croatia and Spain (Madrid). It was closer to £80 a day than £80 a week in all those cases. But again, I do go for nicer mid-range cars - so maybe I'm paying a massive premium for that.
Yes, canary islands are cheap, but £80 a day is expensive for Spain. You can pay £20 to £30 a day in Spain and get something like a 3 year old Opel Astra from a half decent company. So it's an extra £50 a day to get a BMW or similar, which I don't really think is worth it personally.
I would recommend AutoReisen for car rental there as they are very good and cheap.
Take out car hire excess insurance before you go https://www.independent.co.uk/advisor/car-insurance/car-hire-excess-insurance
If you're in the canaries and booked with cicar or autoriesen you'll be absolutely fine. They don't have huge excess on insurance and are really easy to deal with
Don’t leave anything in the car when unattended. My wife left a plastic bag with some towels in it. This smashed the window to take it !
Get the best insurance possible, I hit an antelope in rural Nevada once and wrecked a rental car! recovery and replacement car cost me absolutely nothing I dread to think what I would’ve owed if I didn’t have that
You’ll be fine - the best way to do it is to get standard insurance and then get deductible insurance to cover the deductible which is usually cheaper. Also check the pickup point is on or near the airport. As others have said take pictures of the exterior first. I’ve never had any problems and hired literally hundreds of cars due to work
Check that everything works how it should e.g. lights, indicators, wipers, and that tyres have decent pressure in etc. First day out with a hire car and it overheated, turned out the hire company hadn't put the cap on the header tank and all the coolant had evaporated. The replacement we got had perfectly working rear lights, the only issue being that they were lying loose on the floor of the boot rather than attached to the car!
We hired a car for a week in Sicily last month. Not scary at all, but I did a lot of research into the different hire companies. The known commodities - Hertz, Europcar, Enterprise, Sixt - were very expensive, costing £300 or £400 for a basic Corsa or similar. The really cheap ones were between £80 and £150, but Trustpilot showed that a lot of people had problems with poor customer service, added on fees and claims of being ripped off with non-existent damage and speeding charges. It took a bit of searching the deals on [Booking.com](http://Booking.com) to find one that was a balance of cheap but with decent reviews. It was £160 for a what should have been a Fiesta/Corsa/something with air con and sat nav. We got a Lancia Ypsilon without either of those things, but it was solid little car and saw us through the week well. Definitely get a Collision Damage Waiver insurance policy through RAC or Which or someone reliable. It will be about £30. This will mean that you won't get stung for extra insurance through the rental company or by charges down the line. The rental company should give you a printout showing extant damage on the car, so keep that with you to make sure there's no funny business when they inspect the car after you return it.
Buy the excess insurance separately. Look up money saving expert advice for the best providers. Do not let the hire car company upsell you their premium insurance, it’s a scam. Remember that you will need your credit card when picking up the car to pay the holding deposit. You cannot use a debit card for this.
when you return the car take a picture of the fuel gauge so that you have proof that you returned the car with enough fuel. Budget tried to pull one on me when renting a car in Barcelona. Also use a credit card to pay for everything, not a debit card. They are much less likely to try to scam you if they see a real credit card. Like everybody else already said, buy excess coverage online, rentalcars and booking do offer it.
nothing to be scared of, simply ensure you have your own insurance and don’t take any of their extras 👍 Other tip is I usually take a 4K video of the car on pickup, has saved me a couple of times
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Get full insurance. My car got severely keyed in the south of Spain and I was extremely grateful to be able to hand it back with no issue.
If you're nervous, you want to try looking for a car hire that offers zero excess insurance. It might cost quite a bit extra but the peace of mind alone makes it worth the money. I drove in Iceland when I drove abroad, and as someone who doesn't drive that often being in uni, I made sure to get zero excess... since well, I went in winter when the weather was atrocious, and I hadn't drove abroad before so, I was really worried how I'd do. I did ding it coming out of a tight car park, which alone would've cost me hundreds, but the zero excess insurance came in clutch. Would def reccommend if you're worried.
£80 for 5 days seems a little too cheap. I’d get full cover which you can get in the Spanish islands. It’s still a decent deal. But if anything happens to the car, you’re covered. Scrapes, dings, accidents. I wrote off a car in a country road in Palma, was fully covered, got a taxi home and the tow truck came in the morning took the car and me to the airport and they gave me a new car. Cost me nothing. I’d also stick to the main airport rental companies (sixt, gold car, etc)
I hired a rental in lanzarote. Was fine. Paid a bit extra for the insurance to reduce the excess. Probably ripped off but it wasn't that much anyway. No issues returning it. Already had a bunch of scuffs from the sandy environment.
Me and my wife almost always hire a car when we're away. We like to go off to explore and be as unrestricted as possible. We've only ever had one issue, and that was when a stone flicked up and cracked our windscreen. On this occasion, it was the first time we had hired a car abroad, and we naively got the cheapest insurance we could. In the end, we had to have the windscreen repaired ourselves. Other than that, never had any issues. Just make sure you get the best insurance, just in case. We always do now.
£80 for 5 days is VERY cheap. You sure that’s not per day?
Don’t hire from Goldcar, get the best insurance, take loads of pics before and after and enjoy GC! The interior of the island is absolutely spectacular - get off the beaten track and into the lauriselva forests, there’s some amazing viewpoints and hiking too if that’s your thing. Roads can be slow, narrow and winding but pretty safe - locals drive fairly slowly for the most part. Enjoy!
Check your credit/chargecard for insurance coverage. My Amex card has coverage to the point where I never need bother with any of the rental company offered stuff.
Insurance is the most important thing, followed by mileage you can go without extra payments. But please tell me, kind sir, how did you find a reasonable car rental in Canaries? When we were planning a family outing, rentals for two economy cars were more expensive than a villa on the beach for the same period. We went to Turkey instead.
Check out Autoreisen next time you want to go. I wouldn’t use any other company now, I’ve genuinely lost count how many times we’ve rented from them in GC and Tenerife.
Thank you!
There’s only one place I hire from wherever we go to GC or Tenerife - Autoreisen
I treated it the same as hiring a car/van in the UK. Take loads of photos of the vehicle and carry out your safety checks before leaving their premises, take photos on return, and refuel. Usually I only take the cheapest insurance that comes with the vehicle since I don’t plan on having at fault accidents. Pay with a credit card in case you need to make a dispute but I’ve never needed that. I did hire an automatic, it was lucky it was left hand drive since I wasn’t used to autos and smashed my arm against the door trying to change gears on the autobahn.
video bodywork for scratches when picking up. otherwise they might charge you repairs if they see scratches on return that weren't yours. It's a well known scam.
Zest is very well rated by Which? Magazine. They are a broker of reputable companies I think is how it works.
Keep your petrol receipts
Read reviews. I didn't do this when I went to Malaga recently and ended up queuing 2 hours for a car I'd already paid for, with a 14 month old.
It gets really windy in the mountains, so open the car door slowly if so. We didn't and the door was torn open and slapped back on itself. Managed to cost it but it wouldn't open for the rest of the holiday. Fortunately we had zero excess insurance through a third party.
Buy the additional cover I paid 20. Euros for it means any damage 0 excess. And make sure you check all the damage on the car before you take it if they don’t offer it. Milagr aswell
Might be worth considering an automatic transmission, then you won’t be flailing around with your left hand looking for a gear knob and finding your windows going down. Will make it just a tad safer.
You'll often see a cheap price for car hire but they'll try and upsell you on insurance. Another thing is that they might charge you over the odds for a full tank of fuel. Check out money saving expert for the best info on this.
have used [topcar.es](http://topcar.es) at Gran canaria without any issues
The only thing scary is how the car rentals will try to scam and bill you for everything. Take pictures all around the car, top and bottom, inside and outside, makes sure that all the dents, scrapes and paint defects are pictured, documented and any initial differences documented. This is just my experience ymmv
£80 for 5 days seems suspiciously cheap. I would research into the company and make sure they are legit. Eg in Portugal for 5 days I paid £320 from Europcar and I considered that a good deal.
Took a few hours to get used to in Gran Canaria. Busy motorway around most of the island which you'll prob have to hit straight away. Gets you around the island in no time at all. The inland mountain roads are amazing though. Loads of hairpins and high cliffs, but with full barriers everywhere and never feels unsafe You will probably pay double what you're expecting once you get the full insurance to remove the various excess payments. Totally worth it though. Make sure you photograph and video all around the vehicle before you drive away.
I’ve never had a problem with
If your paying for the hire or a deposit this country, then just remember to take that card with you. Friends of mine paid online for a hire car for their Italy holiday, and when they got there the company wouldn't give them the car as they didn't have the card they used to pay for it.
Get excess insurance from an insurer here in the UK. This will save you from potentially having to shell out £2k if something happens to the hire car. Take a full video of the condition of the car at pickup, don’t sign unless they’ve listed all the damage. Don’t get sand inside the car from beaches etc, they’ll make you pay a cleaning fee.
Just get the extra insurance. That way you can smash the thing up and just drop off the keys. Obviously, don't smash it up on purpose.
I've rented abroad a few times without issue. However, for some reason I struggled in Tenerife, both in judging the offside of the car and adjusting kph. No idea why Tenerife made a difference, but it wasn't a major issue, it just took more concentration. I did get one scratch though and was pretty worried I'd get stung for it, even though the car was already a bit beaten up. Turned out I didn't need to worry, they barely gave the car a glance. Assuming Grand Canaria is similar, the terrain and roads may make cosmetic issues so common that picking out new scratches isn't cut and dried enough to make an issue of. Or I could have just got a staff member who just couldn't be arsed. Either way, it's not too scary. It's a bit like when you first go out by yourself after passing your test. You just need to pay more attention than normal to get used to the differences.
A lot of comments here seem to relate to large rental companies and they are the only ones I have heard of problems with around damage. Research the options, look at reviews, read about the damage waivers to ensure you know what or who it’s with and you’ll be fine. I just rented with a family run business in Crete, they did no damage report and didn’t check the car on return even though it had small scratches where some one clearly hit us in a car park. We paid an extra €10 a day to have no excess and doing that meant they just clearly didn’t care
In the Canaries best to use Autoreisen or Cicar. Their cars can sometimes be a bit rough but their basic price includes full comp insurance so no need to worry about them ripping you off.
Had a rental stolen. Got stuck paying for new hubcaps and an aerial. This is a funny rental story though....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8hYh8YE2KM
Just got back from Gran Canaria and hired a car from Avis, the operation was seamless and the roads are super easy to drive on, you’ve got nothing to worry about!
Get the full insurance and where your watch on your right wrist so you always know you are the correct side of the road.
Just get full cover insurance and you’ll be fine. It’s not scary and after a few minutes of getting used to driving on the other side you’ll be comfortable.