R-O-B = Rip Off Britain. (perhaps it should be rip off Europe)
Always had suspicions this was happening now I have the proof.
Major hire car outfit which asks which country you live in before giving an online quote.
Just done two quotes, identical vehicles, location and duration.
Checked both quotes in detail to see if they were identical in what was included, and indeed they were.
To a USA resident weekly rate = 254.99 USD.
To a UK resident weekly rate = 387.00 USD [1]
Over a 130 bucks extra a week
[1] To be fair the rate is sometimes higher to residents of other European countries eg Germany @ 524 USD.
This rate, however, includes all sorts of insurances and to be honest I can't be bothered to back them out to see what the exact base rate is. Somewhere around 275 usd at a rough guess. But it would be far lower than the UK rate, of that I'm certain.
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I recently found the exact reverse.
My parents were going to Canada, and needed a hire car for 4 weeks, so I searched around on the internet for them.
I found that a certain major car hire company charged half the cost if you said that you were from the UK rather than from Canada or the US.
It appeared to be due to the fact that rates for Canadian or US customers excluded CDW, which had to be added on top. The rates for UK customers (for this particular company) were inclusive of CDW.
I always have a play with the site to see what gives me the best deal. At the end of the day, if I turn up at the hire car company are they really going to be bothered that I am not American, Canadian, German, French etc and refuse to hire the car at that rate.
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PM - I'm off to Canada (Vancouver) for 3 weeks at Christmas - email me with the best value car hire over there that you have found please...addy is in my profile.
Thanks
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In the US you often get the best deals by just rocking up at the rental office. Done that many times. The local manager can sometimes cut you a deal just to shift a car. Another trick is to book something modest, say a mid-size compact, then check if they have any upgrade promos. I've had several Lincoln Town Cars, a Cadillac Seville and a Ford Excursion SUV this way for the price of a Taurus or similar.
Don't forget also to check your frequent flier card collection to get flier mileage if you can. Price isn't everything, look for value for money add-ons and promos.
Besides, if you're going to toss the keys to the valet at the MGM Grand in Vegas or the Ritz-Carlton in DC, you get a bit more attention if your wheels look the part!
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I just got the Barclaycard bill from Budget Bangkok for four days hire of a Honda 1.3 City Automatic (looked like a Honda IMA). Came to £138.55. Expensive, sure. But that included 800 kilometres and a damaged wing inflicted by someone in the airport multi-storey between me parking the car and the Budget guy getting to it. Nasty scratch, too. They told me it could cost me up to a limit of 5,000 baht (about £80), then e-mailed me by the time I got home to tell me it was only going to be 2,500 baht. Just goes to show you can still have good hire car experiences, if you hire from the right people in the right country. In response to FiF\'s first post on this thread, from now on I intend to earn as much as I can in this country and spend as little as I can in this country.
HJ
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For more than 20 years I have favored Budget pretty much everywhere I've been. They did all my fleet leasing in the Middle East and I've always found their franchises pretty much up to snuff. Many of the US upgrades I mentioned in my earlier post were with Budget. I would not call that particularly expensive for 4 days and 800 km, HJ. The last cab I took from LHR to Central London cost me £65.
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That's a good ethic to support the Brit economy, HJ !
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Well thats a fabulous attitude HJ. YOu plan to rip the money out of your patrons in the uk, but not put any back into the industries or services in the uk that pay their wages and hence give you the money you can rip out of them.
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Pretty much the same attitude as all the multinationals adopt anyway. Even the Government is farming out a lot of its IT work to India and the Far East.
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Pretty much the same attitude as all the multinationals adopt anyway. Even the Government is farming out a lot of its IT work to India and the Far East.
The attitude that HJ is taking is one that we all do some extent or another (wittting or unwittingly). Unfortunately, it is something that is going to increase whether we like it or not.
As for IT jobs going to India - that is an "old" story now. The more worrying trend for the future of UK was covered in:
>> " Service industries go global " Financial Times , Aug 19, 2003
By Dan Roberts and Edward Luce; Office Tiger, an outsourcing company with offices on the sixth floor of a pink stone shopping mall in Chennai - formerly... ..">>
In the old days it was manufacturing, but it is service industries now. Not just IT and Call Centres, but also :
Radiology in Israel via internet, aircraft servicing/maintenance in Singapore; Financial Analysts & Merchant Bankers in Chennai; and so on. Soon the only jobs left in UK will be those such as: running trains, servicing cars, civil service, health service, plumbing, and rubbish-collection.
--
{P} = advertising profile is ON. Backroom photos groups.msn.com/honestjohn/pictures
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Chennai, formerly Madras.
Yours,
Mr. Clever Dick.
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I wouldn't worry too much. Those chaps in Brussels have it all worked out, they'll take care of it.
Meanwhile long live offshore tax havens and the free world.
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Its not the chaps in Brussels that worry me, its the chaps in London. Still, they're doing their bit to make our labour rates competitve with India; UK work permits granted next year will increase in number from 40,000 to 200,000 (+dependents).
Now, I must keep pressing my wife to agree to move to Germany - get the family out of this dump.
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Other than a brief discussion about rental cars, this thread has little to do with motoring and a lot to do with politics.
Therefore I've locked it. There are more suitable places.
Mark.
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