Book now your car! Funchal - Madeira Airport Ponta Delgada - Airport The car for your needs Use our simulator and find the perfect car for your needs! New and diversified Fleet Car rental benefits with FirstRent Purchase fuel directly from FirstRent in the beginning of your rental or when you make your booking. We have lower prices than local gas station! With this extra feature you won't have to refill the tank when returning the car. enjoy the best of our offers: super savings!The sun might be shining on our own back gardens but 25 million holidaymakers are expected to head overseas between now and the end of summer, according to the Association of British Travel Agents. A sizeable slice of those will hire a car when they get to their destination – and, unfortunately, a fair number of those will wish they had never bothered. From pricey petrol to paintwork scratches that surface post-hire period, lots of car rental firms have various ways to try and sting you for extra cash.

Here we look at the most common causes for complaint and how to avoid them. It may seem like astoundingly obvious advice to "book early, pay less" but this doesn't stop hundreds of holidaymakers leaving their car hire until the last minute. Even – god forbid – waiting until they're at the airport. But it's not too late to save money even if you are going away in a few weeks. shows that if you book an intermediate sized car (a Peugeot 508 or similar) now from Nice airport for a two-week break starting at the end of July you could save as much as £980 compared to the walk-up price on the day. Check out both the car rentals own websites and broker sites such as travelsupermarket and carrentals.co.uk for the best deal.You turn up at the airport with the voucher for the fully inclusive rate you have paid – but at the desk the friendly sales assistant paints a horror story picture of the €1,000 excess you could be hit with should the slightest scratch appear. You would, she tells you, be better to take out its excess waiver insurance – just in case.

The best way to get around this is to take out a cheap, standalone excess policy before you leave the UK. Sable Corgi Puppies For SaleThese are not only cheaper than hire car firms' own, but are generally a lot more comprehensive. Houses For Sale In Viti Levu Fiji and direct-carexcess.co.uk from around £40 for an annual European policy.Replace Headlight Bulb Bmw 525i Some car hire companies use a full-empty fuel policy where you pay for a full tank of petrol when you pick up your car, but are not offered a refund for returning it with unused fuel (see below). On many holidays, especially short breaks, you have no chance of using all the fuel. estimates that someone hiring a Fiat 500 would need to drive 550 miles to empty the tank.

In Mallorca this would be enough to make the 80-mile round-trip from Palma airport to Port de Pollenca on the other side of the island nearly seven times. Thankfully, the practice is becoming less common but the only way to avoid it is to check the small print of any policy you are interested in before you sign up.recommends Alamo, Enterprise and Autoreisen as companies that operate a fair fuel policy. Paying to hire a child's car seat is an easy way to get hit by sky-high charges – typically up to €10 euro a day. Bringing your own will not only save you money but might also reassure your child and be easier to install – car hire companies won't install it for you. Most airlines, even Ryanair, let you take it for free either on board the aircraft or as extra hold luggage. There are also inflatable or folding portable car seats you can buy such as bubblebum and Boostapak. These are not particularly cheap (up to £45 new) but could be worth it if you use hire cars a lot.

Car hire companies will charge you extra for satnavs – and other extras, such as portable DVD players for the kids. That's fine if you're prepared to pay the prices – otherwise bring your own portable satnav and preload it with the maps for the country you're travelling in. If you've got a smartphone, you can download a free app called Navfree that does the job for you. You don't need to worry about roaming charges as the data is stored on the phone itself rather than using the internet. If more than one of you plans to drive while you're away, factor in the cost before you pay for your car hire. We looked at a week's car hire in Malaga in August and found the cost of adding an extra driver, on the same model of car, on different websites, ranged from €4.45 a day to €12.69 a day. It is an all too common scenario that mystery scratches and unexplained dents are "discovered" by a car hire company on a vehicle only once the keys have been handed back and the driver has left the building.

And, according to research given to The Observer, one in four people who have hired a car said they had found damage which was not highlighted on the collection check-out sheet. ", which carried out the research. "We see plenty of people getting charged for minor wheel damage, or scratches on the bumper which they know were on the car when they picked it up, but were not noted on the paperwork when they collected the vehicle." It might be time-consuming, but when you return the car take photos of all the panels, wheels, lights, bumpers and so on. You should also make sure that you get someone to sign your rental agreement to confirm that there has been no damage to the car before you walk off. If you get to the car hire desk only to find the vehicle grade you paid for (such as economy, standard or prestige) is not available, don't be left out of pocket for a car you didn't ask for. "The car hire company should give you a better car free of charge or refund you for a smaller car," says Atkinson.

This gives you extra protection as your credit card company is equally liable if anything goes wrong (assuming the cost of your hire exceeds £100). There can be few things more galling than thinking you've found a great deal on your holiday car hire, only to have costs more than double when you collect the keys, writes Mel Wright, left. Earlier this month, my husband and I, along with another couple, went on a four-day break to Ibiza. We hired a compact four-door manual car with air-conditioning through Auto Europe UK at a cost of £48.56 (although the car itself was supplied by a firm called Interrent). On arrival at the airport, we were told we had to pay for a full tank of petrol in advance before we could pick up the car, at an eye-watering cost of €77, or around £62 - considerably more than it would have cost to fill up the tank at a local petrol station. This is known as a full-empty fuel policy, and you don't get any refund for returning the car with unused fuel.

We emphasised there was no way we would possibly use anyway near a full tank during our short stay and we hadn't been informed of this at the outset. Sure enough, however, buried in the small print of the policy was a clause stating that for rentals of four days or longer, customers are charged for a full tank of petrol in advance. Even though we used the car a great deal during our four-day stay, we barely made a dent in that tank, using about €5 of petrol at the most. As a result, the car hire company pocketed €72 of our money, or around £58, only to charge the next poor person hiring the car the same €77. Auto Europe has apologised and acknowledges that the full-empty fuel option is "a poor choice" for customers who are renting a car for a few days only. A spokesman said: "We have tried to make our website more transparent by presenting the fuel policy on our car display at the point of reservation, but there is more we can do to prevent clients having a poor experience with our product.