Car hire recommendations please
 

Hi. Can anyone recommend a good/cheap/decent car hire place for our trip in August please. We would like to pick it up from as central Auckland (staying in the CBD) as possible and drop it off at Auckland airport. We are looking for a SUV or similar. Any ideas anyone? Cheers

Re: Car hire recommendations please
 

juicy or apex

Re: Car hire recommendations please
 

I've gone with Jucy for my trip over in a few weeks. I found them really good so far, had to ring them up to change something on the booking that the website wouldn't let me do and they were excellent over the phone.

I'm hoping the service will be just as good when I get there. I've got an 8 seater and road tripping with the family from Auckland down to Christchurch.

I'll get back to you once I get back to the UK to let you know the overall experience.

Re: Car hire recommendations please
 

who ever you do book through make sure if you want to drive from one Island to the other that it is ok to do so. some rentals do not allow travel of their cars to the other island even if you are coming back.

Re: Car hire recommendations please
 

I have to recommend Hertz due to my job.

However when you're going through the hire car process, check your travel insurance for car rental. Just they'll try and flog it to you but reject it if your travel insurance covers.

Finally be careful when driving a rental round here.

Re: Car hire recommendations please
 

Hired both a car in Auckland for 3 weeks and motorhome in Christchurch from Jucy, no problems we experienced good service at pick up and drop off.

Re: Car hire recommendations please
 

That's brilliant - thanks very much. I hadn't even looked at Jucy, so will look at their availability along with Hertz. I'll also check travel insurance Tom; I'm pretty sure we are covered but I'll firm-up on that. We've also got AA membership which I think covers NZ too. We are just doing North Island so that keeps things a bit more simple. Do we need anything apart from our driving licences when we do pick up? I have a photo licence but dh only has a paper one. Does anyone know if this will suffice? Cheers

Re: Car hire recommendations please
 

Rent a Dent are a very good budget supplier - slightly older vehicles but they are generally cheaper than the competition and the Auckland branch were very easy to deal with.

For insurance, you get the basic (no frills) package then pay extra to insure the excess.
We have a specific insurance policy (worldwide) to insure the excess on car hire rentals and this costs under £50 a year and has already saved us far more than that. Saved more than that in the UK last year, before we started travelling.

We use Insurance4CarHire - only had to claim once a year or so back (bump on bumper of a car we left at a location for hire firm to collect) and had no problems whatsoever.

Please note that the policy we had excluded 4WD and campers and had exclusions about unmade roads. You need to check any policy to see if the exclusions fit in with NZ roads and your planned vehicles. I think there were other more expensive options with more cover.

Oh, and with Juicy (which we also checked) there was an exclusion that if you didn't take their full policy then you would be liable for lost rental for every day the vehicle was off the road after an accident (regardless of who was to blame). This seemed somewhat alarming. We checked with RentADent and their excess was just that - everything covered by the insurance apart from the excess and that was the limit of your liability. We may have misunderstood the Juicy Ts&Cs but RentADent was cheaper anyway.

The RentADent basic insurance only covered roads maintained by NZ authorities - basically tarmac and "gravel" (usually granite chippings or similar). Usually when you get to the end of a "maintained" road you see a sign similar to "Private Road - not maintained by Highway Authorities".

Re: Car hire recommendations please
 

also take out glass cover will cover you for all windows we have just come back and we paid $14 per day extra and we ended up with a broken windscreen, so well worth it, if you do go over on the ferry, normally you leave car , then pick up another on other side and do same when you come back

Re: Car hire recommendations please
 

Im rubbish at studying policies so thank you so much both for the advice. I hadn't realized that about non-maintained roads;pretty harsh. So more food for thought - cheers

Re: Car hire recommendations please
 

Makes sense - tourist driving on roads much like home - normal insurance risk.

Tourist decides that (based on no previous experience) off-roading looks fun and doesn't navigate a river crossing or rough track as well as the locals who grew up with it - expensive self inflicted damage plus a big bill just to recover the vehicle.

Equally, taking a normal domestic saloon car on gravel roads is no biggie although you have to moderate your driving due to less overall grip and bigger potholes. However once you get to the end of the "maintained" roads then you are in serious 4WD territory and your first attempted stream crossing is likely to be your last. See above for recovery costs.

Tourist hire car (especially RentADent) probably worth around $10,000 to $20,000. Newish motor home (gulp) $200,000. Different class of risk there.

Re: Car hire recommendations please
 

Yep, that all makes sense. You tend to forget about idiot drivers when you are careful yourself. Never been to NZ to know what roads are like there. I never have to leave. "B" road here so again it wasn't something I really thought about. Cheers for a different perspective - I almost feel sorry for them now!