Car hire firms that charge you £76 for a child’s seat

CAR hire companies are hammering holidaymakers with hundreds of pounds in extra charges.

Extra costs for satellite navigation systems, car seats and excess insurance can double the price of hiring a car, an investigation has revealed.

According to the report by the insurer icarhireinsurance, renting a family car at Milan Airport from Europcar costs £442 – but extras take the price to a staggering £872.

The biggest extra is excess insurance which, as the Mail reported last weekend, is a hugely lucrative source income for car rental firms.

These companies are pressuring customers into taking out rip-off insurance costing up to £30 a day by threatening them with huge bills of up to £2,500 if they are involved in an accident. Although customers are automatically insured when they rent a car, these firms routinely impose an excess fee of 800 euros or more.

And companies including Budget and Europcar are charging up to £100 to hire a sat nav system for a week, according to the report.

It said families are prize targets for car hire firms which can impose charges of £7 or more for a week for a child seat. Firms are also on average charging £43 a week for an extra driver, although Europcar charges £ 2.52 in Lille and £55 in Milan.

Guy Anker, from MoneySavingExpert, said: ‘Ignore online booking traps or dodgy salesmen trying to flog them, sometimes via fear tactics.

‘You can often bring your own child seat, use free sat nav apps or buy vastly cheaper excess insurance to slash the cost and stop the profiteering.’