The Car at the Other End
The Car at the Other End — What a Broker Actually Sells You
You pay one company, and a different company hands you the keys. Everything agreeable about booking a hire car through a broker, and everything that goes wrong with it, follows from that single fact.
A broker is not a rental company. It owns no cars, staffs no counters, and washes no windscreens. What it owns is a very good search engine sitting across some eight hundred suppliers in more than a hundred and fifty countries — the familiar names, Sixt and Hertz and Avis, alongside local firms you will never have heard of. You reserve with the broker and you pay the broker. Then you land, and a stranger in a portacabin at the edge of the airport has the car.
The saving is real
It is worth saying plainly, because the caveats below might otherwise drown it: the prices are genuinely lower than booking direct, often markedly so. That is the whole point of the arrangement, and the reason a hundred and fifty thousand people have left EconomyBookings something close to four and a half stars. The search is quick, the map is wide, and a fortnight in Sicily can cost half what the manufacturer's own website quotes.
Take the saving. Just understand what you have bought.
The insurance gap
This is the complaint that appears most often, and the one worth reading twice. You buy full-cover protection from the broker at the time of booking. You arrive at the desk. The desk has never heard of it, does not recognise it, and will not accept it in place of its own cover — so it offers you the counter's insurance at counter prices, or places a substantial hold on your card instead.
Both things can be true at once: the broker's policy is real and will reimburse you afterwards, and the local desk is entitled to secure the car in whatever way its own contract specifies. The policy you bought is a promise to pay you back, not a promise that nobody will ask you for money.
So budget for the hold regardless. Assume the counter will want several hundred on the card, whatever the confirmation email says, and you will never be caught out at the barrier.
The credit card rule
A physical credit card, in the primary driver's name, present at the counter. Not a debit card. Not a card belonging to your husband, who is standing right there. Not a card on the phone.
This is where most refused rentals begin, and there is no arguing it at the desk at midnight. The clerk has no authority to waive it and no interest in trying. If the card and the booking name do not match, you are taking a taxi.
Choose the supplier, not just the price
The broker's list will show you a named international brand and, twelve pounds cheaper, an operator whose name you do not recognise. The rating attached to the supplier tells you more about how the week will go than the rate does.
The known brands are not saints, but they behave predictably: the shuttle runs, the desk is staffed, the fuel policy is the one advertised. The cheapest unknown local operator may be perfectly good — many are — or may be a desk that closes at nine, a car park twenty minutes from the terminal, and a queue of forty people at eight in the morning. Read the supplier's reviews, not the broker's.
Settle everything before you drive away
Once you have left the counter, the machinery slows considerably. The broker sits in Latvia, the car sits in Andalusia, and each will tell you the other is responsible. Refund claims and post-rental disputes are reported as slow and occasionally unsatisfying — not dishonest, but not brisk either.
The remedy is entirely in your hands and takes four minutes. Photograph every panel, both bumpers, the wheels, the windscreen, and the fuel gauge before you move the car. Do the same when you return it. Keep the signed condition sheet. Raise every disagreement while you are still standing beside the vehicle with a member of staff, because that is the last moment at which anyone can simply fix it.
The whole of it, in four lines
- Book through the broker — the saving is real and the search is better.
- Read the terms attached to the supplier, not only the headline rate.
- Arrive with a credit card in the driver's own name, and expect a hold on it.
- Photograph the car, twice, and settle everything before you drive away.
A hire car should be the dullest part of the journey. Arranged properly, it is.
A note on figures
Ratings, deposit amounts, and insurance terms change and vary by supplier and country; the figures above were accurate at the time of writing. Check the terms shown against your own booking before you travel. The booking partners we keep on hand are listed on our Resources page.
