Rental cars can quickly blow up your vacation budget. A lot comes into play when it comes to costs, insurance, clauses and deposits. Here you can read how you can avoid high expenses.
Travel independently on vacation: rental cars make you mobile when traveling. To ensure that everything goes smoothly, here are important questions and answers about booking.
The rule is: the earlier, the better – especially with the summer holiday season in mind. As the high season approaches, the prices for this time steadily increase slightly.
After all: Compared to 2022, not only are more rental cars available, but average prices have also fallen in most holiday countries, as comparison portals and rental car providers report. However, if you wait until shortly before departure to book, you will not only pay more. Sometimes the desired vehicle category is no longer available at the destination.
The Automobile Club of Germany (AvD) advises booking the rental car and insurance from home – with a provider that is clearly aimed at German customers. Then German law would also apply if there are problems. If you book the car on foreign sites or at your holiday destination, foreign law applies. If you want to be on the safe side, check the legal notice to see whether the company is based in Germany.
The use of comparison portals is recommended, the AvD continues. Models and conditions from different providers could be easily compared using the search filters.
The pitfalls when booking with a local provider in the holiday destination are usually lower liability amounts or exclusions and lower consumer rights. In addition, the place of jurisdiction is always in the country in which the contract was concluded. This makes enforcing possible recourse claims in court more difficult or sometimes impossible for most holidaymakers.
The coverage amounts of motor vehicle liability insurance, for example in the case of personal injury, can be significantly lower in some countries than in Germany. In the worst case, after an accident, this can mean that the insured sum is not enough and you have to pay for it yourself, according to the advice portal Finanztip.
This is where the so-called Mallorca clause comes into play – additional insurance for rental cars in other European countries, which increases the sum insured at least to the statutory minimum level required in Germany, which is, for example, 7.5 million euros in the event of personal injury.
It is possible that such a Mallorca clause, which is officially called “insurance for the use of third-party vehicles subject to insurance”, is already included in your own vehicle insurance or a car protection letter. If you don’t have a car and therefore don’t have vehicle insurance or protection letters, you can also add it to your existing private liability insurance, according to Finanztip.
Anyone who rents a car outside Europe can take out a traveler policy, which works in the same way as the Mallorca clause.
If you have not made sure that you have such a policy, you should, according to the consumer advice centers, definitely check that one of the following insurances is at least stipulated in the rental car contract: LIS, EP, ALI and SLI – all of which stand for higher liability coverage amounts, explain consumer advocates.
From the point of view of ADAC car rental, a fully comprehensive policy with theft protection and no deductible is advisable. You should therefore make sure that glass, rims and tires are covered in the insurance, because damage is most common there.
Important: Insurance taken out for the rental car booked only applies to the drivers specified when booking. If someone else is driving, there is no insurance cover.
An important detail when booking: If you choose offers with limited kilometers, you should be very clear about the distances you will cover on vacation. Otherwise it may end up being more expensive than expected because every additional kilometer costs extra, according to AvD. Tariffs without limits are often only slightly more expensive. It’s not that you’re making false savings here.
In order to avoid trouble here, you should attach importance to the “full-to-full” tank control: you pick up the car with a full tank and return it with a full tank. Refilling by the landlord is expensive and is often charged at double or triple the petrol station price, warns the AvD.
Inspect the rental car carefully and have an employee of the rental car company record dents and scratches. To be on the safe side, you can also take photos of them yourself with your smartphone.
Anyone who has already booked a rental car in advance should no longer sign any documents on site that are written in a language that they do not understand, according to the AvD. There is a risk that a new contract will be concluded with different conditions and according to the laws applicable in the holiday country.
If the deposit for the rental car due upon collection is blocked on the credit card, you should first make sure that the card limit is sufficient, according to the consumer advice centers. Depending on the landlord, the deposit can be between 300 and 2,300 euros. Also important: know the PIN of your credit card – this is now almost always requested.