Re: Hiring a car internationally & driving tips
Tips:
Booking:
1. When you book your car, you should NOT have to pay anything upfront. If the car hire company asks for your credit card details during booking, skip it & try another one.
2. There are pre-paid bookings which fall around 10% or so cheaper, but I would strongly recommend against those. At least for the first couple of your trips.
3. There are A and B group companies out there. Hertz, Avis & all the big names are the 'A' group companies. They usually have a policy of selling off their cars after 6 months! That means your cars will be practically brand new.
4. 'B' group companies will be cheaper. But they will skimp on the quality of the cars usually ... also they might not have their cars at the airports themselves but will have a shuttle service to their location (this wastes a bit of your time)
5. Hiring a car from the airport itself has the added advantage of you saving a bit on taking a taxi from the airport. But usually, picking up a car from the airport will attract a 'surcharge' which usually negates this small advantage. For your first trip, avoid taking the car from the airport itself.
6. When you book a car, they will *only* reserve a *category* for you. The *actual* make of the car that you get will depend on what's available.
Categories available are usually:
Economy
Compact
Standard / Full-size
SUV
Van
etc.
Tips about Picking up the car:
Formalities:
1. Firstly, on going to the car counter, they will ask to see your papers. Let's see each one in detail:
a. Driving License:
a.1 The minimum age for hiring a car is usually 25. If you're younger than 25, they will charge you an extra amount ... or in some cases refuse to hire you the car. Usually 'Luxury' cars like Audis, Mercedeses etc. will not be hired to people under 25.
a.2 You must have held your current driving license for *at least* 1 year - 3 years (this will be mentioned at the time of booking in the fine-print. Read it carefully & ascertain if you are eligible for the car before booking)
a.3 You should not have any major 'endorsements' in your license. now in India, we don't have the system usually to actually mark in our licenses when we commit a traffic offense so we're usually safe here.
b. IDP:
b.1 For non-English speaking countries ... (most of Europe is non-English speaking for example), you will need a 'translation' of your license. This translation is called an IDP (International Driving Permit).
To get one, you will either have to visit your local RTO ... or go to WIAA ... the only other body authorized to issue an IDP in India.
You will need 4 passport sized photos, your passport with a photocopy, a VALID VISA and of course your driving license.
ALL your details between your passport & license have to match. If your address is different, an agent will temporarily change your address on your license to match your passport & then change it back for a fee. But if your name / date of birth etc. doesn't match, you're out of luck!!!
It takes 1 working day to get your IDP. You should NOT have to hand over your passport to anyone. The RTO chaps will just examine it and return it.
The IDP will be valid for 1 year from the date of issue.
It doesn't matter which country's visa you use to get your IDP. you can travel to any country & use it after getting it.
And the most important thing: Your IDP is completely useless without being accompanied by your local license. Don't leave your Indian license at home!!!
So how does this IDP thing work? You haven't taken a driving test ... how do they ensure that you drive properly in their country? The logic as to my understanding is this: All countries allow foreign nationals to drive in their country as a courtesy ... so long as they have their own country's valid license. The idea is that once you drive, your brain 'kicks in' and adapts to each country (obviously the thinkers of this rule hadn't driven in India
).
But this is ONLY valid for 6 months. If you are staying in any country for longer than 6 months, you have to take the local driving test & get a license issued of that country.
Oh and in case I wasn't clear earlier: There is NOTHING like and International Driving License. Such a document does NOT EXIST!!!
c. International Credit Card
The amount of your entire rental will be 'blocked' on your credit card at the time of rental. When you return the car, after a couple of days, they will deduct the actual amount. You must have *enough credit limit* to cover the entire rental + the insurance excess amount (I will explain all about insurance in a bit. Just bear with me for a moment).
The thing is that a swiped credit card is the ONLY way that the company can recover costs if you damage their car & the amount they need to recover from you is greater than what has been blocked / paid. So even if you want to make the entire payment by cash (which is usually not allowed) or by debit card, they will STILL need a credit card all the same.
For certain luxury cars, they will insist on 2 credit cards in your name. They will swipe both.
d. Insurance
CDW / LDW & Third-party insurance.
CDW means Collision Damage Waiver. LDW means Loss Damage Waiver. They are just different terms for the same thing depending on the country you are hiring in. Both of these are optional (but highly recommended). Third-party insurance is compulsory (it will be covered by your overseas health insurance i.e. travel insurance in case you decide to waive off insurance. If you do have to do that, you will need to show them your travel insurance printout)
So how does this insurance thingy work? Suppose you take an expensive car ... and scratch it / bang it / completely total it. Who bears the loss? Getting a small scratch here & there is very easy when you're driving in a foreign country esp. if you're used to scratching your car in India
. Car insurance, though a major scam IMO, is still a very essential evil. (Why is it a scam? I'll explain it at a later date).
The way it works is that you basically pay a premium daily ... and the insurance company is now liable for any damage / loss of the car (but let me tell you the fineprint before you think of deliberately banging their car).
It's HIGHLY recommended that you take this insurance.
In case you damage the car, there will be some formalities you will have to follow (Check with the car company. Thankfully I have no experience with this ... yet
).
But the key is that there is a certain amount of 'excess' that they charge you still. This is to ensure that you don't become a 'casual' driver & damage the car knowing that you won't have to pay anything. You will *still* have to pay a minimum amount which is usually quite large. To give you perspective, an Opel Zafira costs avg. 5000 Rs. a day to hire ... it's insurance excess is around 60,000 Rs. after conversion. In case I were to NOT have insurance though, and if I were to total the car, I would have to most likely pay in excess of 10Lac.
They will be very eager to make you take insurance so there's no chance of you forgetting. What you CAN avoid though is a Super-CDW. This charges MUCH MORE per day ... but your excess is now very less or 0 depending on how much you are ready to pay upfront. I won't normally take this super insurance cover.
Now about the insurance fineprint:
d.1: Only the main driver i.e. you will be insured. Which means that if your husband / wife / friend was driving the car ... and an accident occured, they will NOT pay any insurance.
If you want to 'allow' others to drive the car, you must buy insurance for them too. This is called '
Additional Driver'. Some companies charge for this, some don't. You MUST take this for each person who is going to be driving ... even if it is just for a short time. (You cannot add this later on. This has to be decided at the time of taking the rental)
d.2: Usually, the insurance does NOT cover tyres, windscreen & the under-carriage of the car. Which means if you have a flat tyre & you destroy it, they have the right to refuse to pay for that.
d.3: There might be certain cases when the insurance won't cover your car in case of an accident. This is usually in the case of 3rd world countries. In most developed countries, the rules are pretty straight-forward.
Other terms:
Extra Driver / Additional Driver (this is VERY important): As mentioned above, kindly declare ALL people who are going to be driving the car at the time of taking the rental. You will need to give the License, IDP etc. of each person who will be driving. The Credit Card though will only need to be in the name of the first i.e. primary driver.
Excess: The amount of money you will need to pay in case the car is damaged and is eligible for insurance. Super-CDW reduces this but you have to pay more per day.
e. Fuel Policy:
When you pick up your car, it will be clean, and will have a full tank. You must return it with a full tank. Ideally, you should refuel it at the closest pump right before the place where you drop your car off during returning.
e.1 In case you do not return the car with a full tank, they will charge you a surcharge & a re-fuelling charge. Basically, just top it up before returning it
e.2 If possible, preserve the petrol / diesel bill of your last full tank. In case you see a re-fuelling charge on your credit card after a month of returning the car, this will help you claim that amount back!
f. Choosing the car:
Different places will have different systems. But by-and-large, you will get to choose from multiple cars in a particular category. For example, in Las Vegas, we could choose from over 30 cars in our category. On the other hand, in Sweden, we had just 1 car waiting for us so there was nothing to choose from!
As a rule, when I choose a car, I look at the amount of kms. each car has run & just pick up the one which has run the least. Like in Johannesburg, South Africa, I found a Nissan Micra which had run just 4000 kms!!! It was practically new!
but in New Jersey, all the cars they had had run over 30,000 kms. Needless to say, I got a flat later!
f.1 Once you choose your car, they will enter the details in your contract & you're good to go. They don't care after they have handed you the keys & the car as to whether you know how to drive or you are going to damage anything. They're just doing their job & couldn't care less!
f.2 But before you sign the contract finally, they will mark all the existing scratches on the car on their paper. See to it that *everything* is marked.
g. Mileage limit:
Some companies will limit the total number of kms. for which you can drive the car. I would avoid this as much as possible & get unlimited mileage as the extra km. charges are quite high.
Driving rules & tips, I'll cover in the next post. I'll also cover returning the car in the post after that. But I just had 1 last tip:
DO try & take a GPS. If you're driving in
cities abroad (and not smaller places), without a GPS, this will be next to impossible (I've tried it
). I would recommend you to take any old Nokia phone which has free maps with voice guidance ... like the C5 or whatever you are comfortable with. Why Nokia? It's the ONLY phone which allows you to download their maps from here itself. You DO NOT need an internet connection in your target country now to use the GPS of your phone.
I have used this in almost all my trips (except my initial 2 trips where I used paper maps) ... and it has worked like a charm everywhere.
If you take a car with GPS, the amount you will pay will be more than a brand new nokia phone with GPS. The Nokia idea has another advantage: you can save all your addresses of your hotels etc. in your 'favourites' from here itself ... so that you don't waste time out there.
(The newer Nokia Windows phones are not as friendly as the older ones & are a bit of a pain. Nokia 'Drive' is just not the same as the older Ovi Maps
)
Hope all this helps.
Oh and don't be put off by the length of this. It's all quite simple once you get the hang of it. DO drive once abroad ... you will be totally hooked ... like we (me & my wife) are
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Good topic to discuss Manan. But I think 'International' is too broad a term to use. From India's perspective international could mean USA or Vietnam equally. I think you have to segment the world into clusters (eg. North America, Europe etc.) to have meaningful discussion. But it's an interesting topic to talk about nonetheless!
Hmm
. That makes sense. Ok ... maybe we should call it 'Hiring a car internationally but only where major car hire companies exist'.
I'm refering to 'Hertz' etc. (Though truthfully, my experience of hiring from Hertz in Delhi & Chandigarh was NOTHING like what i've explained).
Should it be 'Hiring a car internationally in developed countries'? But that would be too restrictive.
Ideas?
in the article & went ahead & said that if you have one, you don't need your own countries license!!!).
