Lets just say you’ve booked an early morning flight in order attend an important business meeting and you know you won’t have much time to muck around with collecting your rental car when you arrive at the airport. So how do you guarantee a fast car rental check out?
Here is 10 tips to speed through the rental car checkout process.
1 – Online Check-in
Just like airlines online check-in, some car rental companies offer its customers the chance to pre enter all their driver licence and identification details during the online hire car booking process. Doing this saves the car rental representative the time to have to type it all in when your waiting to pick up your car.
2 – VIP Loyalty Clubs
Joining a loyalty club, especially a VIP one such as Club Red, or Business Club may allow you to skip any queue at the car rental desk and be given the highest priority when collecting your rental car.
3 – Prepay Online
If you have the choice, prepay your car rental online. By doing this it will save the car rental representative just one extra step when writing up your car rental contract and one extra step you can be towards being on the road.
4 – Choose your rental vehicle wisely
Rental companies have a wide variety of fleet types, however they usually only have a smaller amount of specialty vehicles. If you plan to be in a super rush and normally book the most luxurious SUV, then maybe consider downgrading to something that the rental company will have plenty of. In peak periods this will save you the hassle of waiting around for your car to be cleaned just after its returned from another rental due to be almost booked out.
5 – Research the airport terminal
If you’ve never been to your destination airport before, it would be wise to look up the airport maps just so that you know where to go to collect your bags and your car. Not only that, if you are flying from a major hub more often than not you will have a number of passengers on your same flight that are intending to collect a car from the same rental company as you. So know where you’re going and be in front of the queue.
6 – Have identification ready
First thing all car rental representatives ask you for is your credit card and your driver’s licence. If this is in the bottom of your bag that needs an archaeological dig to discover, then maybe think about storing them somewhere which is easy to remember and quick to retrieve when needed.
7 – Pre select your optional extras
Need vehicle damage cover? Or a portable GPS unit? Well the rental representative could have already assigned this to your rental contract if you had already selected it at time of booking. Just another step to save you time.
8 – Credit card in your name
If your boss paid for the rental online, we still need the person driving to cover the cost of any possible additional charges. Of course we can use your boss’s credit card (or anyone else willing), however it does take time to complete the necessary paperwork if they are not with you at point of rental collection. If you don’t intend on any further charges, then placing your credit card down to cover any additional costs will save a lot of time. Don’t forget Redspot Car Rentals now accepts Visa and Mastercard debit cards as security for the rental if you don’t own a credit card.
9 – Have sufficient funds to cover the bond
All car rental companies have a security bond. Some can be up to $1000, however most just like Redspot Car Rentals are no more than $200 on top of the rental costs. This cost is to cover for any additional charges and is frozen (pre-authorised) at the time of collection the rental vehicle. If for some reason there is not enough funds on your card to cover the bond, then ultimately there will be a delay to try and either transfer funds or find another card to use.
10 – Flight arrival time
This is not necessarily always an option, but if you are planning a business trip, and have the flexibility to collect your car at any time, you should consider booking outside the early morning 7-9am and afternoon 4-6pm rush periods at the airport to avoid length queues.
At the end of the day Redspot Car Rentals tries its very best to meet the needs of all its customers and process the car rental transactions as fast as possible. The unfortunate side of this is that it doesn’t always happen and sometimes we need to assist a confused customer or get held up by lengthy delays due to peak rental periods.
At the end of the day, its wise if you can afford yourself an extra 30 mins between collecting the rental car and your business meeting for unforeseen flight, luggage or car rental delays.