"DAILY" RENTAL RATES

We don't like quoting "daily rates" because they are misleading!

“Daily Rate” comparisons don’t work

We made rental comparisons in November 2006 covering 25 different car rental operators, and the ones we checked were:

We tried to compare "apples with apples" so we selected a medium automatic four door sedan - e.g. Nissan Tiida, Pulsar, Corolla, Elantra. Our vehicle was the Yr2006 ST-S Nissan Tiida, about $1,000 more expensive to buy than the normal Nissan Tiida ST model used by other car rental companies. Cars surveyed ranged from Yr2003 Pulsars through to Yr2006 Tiidas or Corollas.

We specified daytime arrival and departure at Gold Coast Airport with two nominated drivers, minimal insurance excess and unlimited distance allowance for local motoring. We also specified one child seat and one booster seat. Apart from us and our affiliate Sunnytop Car Rentals, only Action Rent A Car offered the child seats and boosters for no charge.

We obtained quotes for a week in the national school holidays peak period and also for a week in an "off peak" period. Apart from us and our affiliate Sunnytop Car Rentals, only Paradise Car Rentals, Trans Tasman Car Rentals and Action Rent A Car maintained the same price for both "peak" and "off peak" quotes.

The differences between "peak" and "off peak" with each other company ranged from a low of $17.69 (next higher one was $30.79) extra to a staggering difference of $279.18 extra in one case. Ten of the increases were under $100 and ten of them were over $100 extra for a week in the peak season.

Peak period prices ranged from our $388 (next up the scale was $424 & $427 - both with $500 insurance excess exposures, compared with our $275 and NIL excess for windscreen or tyre damage) to $893.20 for essentially the same deal. Off-peak rental prices ranged from our $388 to a high of $708.50 (with a median price about $450).

We made two quotes from our website - $388.00 with our MaxiSafe excess reduction package (bringing the excess down to $275) and $452.50 with our TourSafe full Travel Insurance package offering a NIL excess and a NIL Security Bond as well as luggage cover, travel delay cover, cancellation cover, accidental death and legal liability cover.

Many of the surveyed operators have procedures where glass, tyres, interior, hail etc. (varies from operator to operator) are not covered or are subject to an extra charge in order to be covered and many have what we believe is a harsh treatment for "Single Vehicle Accidents" - in two instances, it proved impossible to bring the excess for these into line with other incidents.

The "daily rate" we use on our website is $43 for the Nissan Tiida - there were only five quotes with "daily rates" higher than ours (ranging up to $50) and there were nineteen with lower "daily rates" (down to $32) yet none of them were anywhere near us on total price.

Incredibly, the lowest "daily rate" produced the highest "off peak" total - if you went on "daily rate" alone, you'd pay $708.50 for a standard Corolla instead of $388 for a level up model Nissan Tiida. The lowest peak period "daily rate" of $39 produced two quotes ($484.33 and $530.53) - that's $96 or $142 more than our price!

If you want to pay less than our $388, that's easy - just go for one of our not so new other cars (most competitors don't give you this option) - we can get down to $238 for the week - our most common pricing is around $250- $275 for the week - peak period or not.