Open-top Fiat was a great idea until we hit the road
AS the sun beat down on the scorched Italian landscape, I walked into the car hire office like a gunslinger in a spaghetti western.
Eyes narrowed into slits, I was determined to be quicker on the draw than the compadre behind the counter. I had scoured the web to get a best-ever price of €58 for five days from Intercar and there was no way I was going to ruin it with extras that rack up the price.
Car-hire firms are notorious for charging ultralow fees for the car itself and then make profits with extras. Sat navs, baby seats and insurance can cost more to rent than the car itself. You can cash in on the low
car-hire rates by avoiding the extras.
But as I entered the office, I was disarmed. Instead of a grimacing bandito, there was a charming guy not unlike Roberto Benigni in the Oscar-winning film Life Is Beautiful.
Then he offered an extra I wasn’t expecting – a ‘special offer’ for an open-top Fiat 500. And who wants to drive around in a car with a roof in Italy? Bang! He got me straight between the eyes.
Noting that my prized €58 car hire deal had now nearly doubled to €108, I was already regretting rookie mistake number one when I made rookie mistake number two – I refused the excess insurance option.
At up to €29 per day, it costs nearly three times more than renting the car.
But this is business. You pay very little to hire the car and through the roof for everything else.
The best moneyspinner in business is a pricey extra with a compelling reason to buy it. And car hire companies have come up with one.
It’s the oldest trick in the insurance book – a pricey excess – in this case up to €3,000. That’s how much you may have to pay if you don’t take out an insurance policy
to insure against paying this excess. I had wrestled with this annoying concept of ‘insuring the insurance’ already and having refused the cheaper option of doing it online, I couldn’t pay even more in the office. I decided I would drive carefully and take my chances. Big mistake. Not because I had a crash, but because I avoided driving the car all week for fear of getting a scratch or a dent and triggering the humongous excess!
To rub salt in the wound, the soft-top option that I paid €50 extra for was completely useless. Five minutes from the airport, unable to converse or listen to music properly, and rapidly getting ‘sun-roof forehead’, I closed the top, never to re-open it again on the trip.
The next time I drove the car was to bring it back to the airport, when I made rookie mistake number three – I didn’t fill the petrol tank (in fairness, I hadn’t seen a garage for 30km before the airport).
Facing a large and unfavourable fine, we set off again from the depot to find a petrol station.
It took forever to find one – 45 minutes, in fact – almost causing us to miss our flight home as stress levels went through the now firmly closed car roof.