Comparisons : Car Rental Vs. Leases
Rental: You might get a new car, you might get something that’s been mightily abused by countless tourists before you.
Lease: You’re getting a spanking new, straight off the truck, still bits of plastic sticking out of the side mirror swivels, smells like plastic and carpet shampoo, buffed to a high shine automobile. The odometer might read, at most, “000004.”
Rental: You can rent an “Economy” or a “Mid-Sized” model and they’ll guarantee you only “an Opel Astra, or similar” meaning you don’t know what the heck you’re going to get.
Lease: You’re buying the car, so you get the exact make and model you ask for.
Rental: Local taxes, which hover around 19% or more, are often not included in the rate quoted you-you won’t find out until you return the car and they hand you a bill.
Lease: You’re not renting, you’re buying, and since you’re a non EU-citizen (and therefore VAT-exempt) and purchasing something that is, trust me, worth far more than the roughly $250 minimum needed in each country to get over the tax-free barrier, there are no taxes.
Rental: To write an additional driver into the rental agreement (say, your spouse) costs about $5 per day.
Lease: Usually, spouses and direct descendents (assuming they’re over 18) can drive the car and are fully covered by the insurance.
Rental: With the bigger agencies, pick-up and drop-off is available in a pretty wide selection of cities and even small towns. However, it costs more to pick up at the airport, and if you want open-ended plans, they’ll often charge you a “one-way fee” for dropping off in a different location from where you picked up (in our rental example above, Rome to Paris, this fee is a whopping $285 at Avis or National, and a frankly ridiculous $500 at Hertz).
Lease: The network of places you can pick up or drop off is more limited (roughly 36 locations across Western Europe, with half in France). However, there’s no extra charge for dropping off in a different location from where you picked up-though any pick up or drop-off made outside France usually tacks on $50 to $175-and, unlike with rentals, airport pick-ups are (usually) no more expensive than downtown.
Rental: Unlimited mileage (usually).
Lease: Unlimited mileage (always).
Rental:Many grumpy rental firms won’t trust younger explorers with their wheels; most set a minimum age limit at anywhere from 23 to 25.
Lease: It’s available to anyone over 18.
Rental: Unless your credit card covers it (and even if it does, in Italy or Spain) you are charged around $10 a day extra for the CDW (Collision Damage Waver), and many also charge you for a LDW (Loss Damage Waiver) and TLW (Theft Loss Waiver).
Lease: You get a full insurance package of the kind you enjoy at home, covering everything from property damage to injuries, both to you and the other drivers.
Rental:Read the fine print on the agreement: there’s usually a deductible on the insurance scheme. Fender bender on the autobahn? Side-swiped by a double-parking Fiat? Window smashed in by thieves? A rental agency will break the news that, despite your insurance, that CDW, and the theft insurance they made you buy, you still have to pay a sizeable deductible (which can be anywhere from $500 to $1,000 or more) before it kicks in. Some rental agencies now offer a “Super CDW” that waives the deductible, but it costs a few more bucks per day.
Lease: The insurance is deductible-free. The situations described above, while I sincerely hope you can avoid them, aren’t at all unusual. I’ve been rear-ended on a European highway during a traffic jam by some idiot too busy talking on his cell phone to pay attention (joke’s on him and his $60,000 Mercedes), had the passenger side of my parked car nearly sheared away in Sicily whilst I was in a museum, and had my rear window reduced to sparking bits of glass all over the back seat on my very last night in Rome (since I’d lugged my luggage up to my hotel room and even taken the radio faceplate with me, the frustrated thieves didn’t get a thing). All three were leased cars. Each time, I’ve turned the car back in to the guy at the airport with a sheepish smile, a shrug, a “Sorry!,” and, most importantly, without having to crack open my wallet.
SOURCE: MSNBCTravel News
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