Tips on Hiring A Car at Heathrow Airport

If you are going to hire a car after visiting London, think very carefully about going back to the airport and picking up your hire car from there. It is the obvious place to do this - there are plenty of companies based at the airport with a myriad of options, and it is on the outskirts of the city so you don't have to battle inner city traffic - but it has its traps for the unwary traveller and can end up costing you dearly.

Don't think that because you have used a certain hire car company at home and found them trustworhty, you will have the same experience there. You might ... but you might not. Hire car companies pay a lot of money to have both a sales point in a terminal at an airport like Heathrow, and for space to park their hundreds of cars there. They have to get that money back from someone and that someone is you. Even though the cost per day to hire a car from a major airport is always higher than hiring the same car from the same rental company in a regional centre, they have ways of getting even more cash out of you.

Even if you have pre-booked a specific size car, don't be surprised if, when you go and pick it up, they'll tell you that car is not available and try to upgrade you to a more expensive one. Another trick they pull is to have a quick chat with you upon arrival before filling in the paperwork. You think they are just being friendly, in fact they are sizing you up for an upgrade by getting a brief picture of how many are travelling, what luggage you have and where you are going. They then might tell you that the car you have ordered is not suited to your needs and before you've finished telling them about your trip, they already have a contract filled out for a different car at a much higher rate than you were quoted. They play on the fact that you have just completed a 24 hour flight and the last thing you want to be doing is haggling with a salesperson, and that asking to be taken back to the airport's arrivals hall in their courtesy bus so you can check out what other car hire companies have to offer is something you probably wouldn't even think of with them standing over you pushing for your signature.

One way to reduce your chances of getting taken for a ride (no pun intended) is to hire a car in a regional city away from an international airport. Rather than catch a train from your accommodation to Heathrow, catch one to a regional city in an area you are going to explore by road instead. It could be Leeds if you plan to visit Yorkshire; Southampton or Portsmouth if you are heading for the south coast; Edinburgh or Glasgow (the cheapest of the two) if you are touring Scotland; Nottingham, Cambridge, anywhere but Heathrow!

It will cost a few pounds to get there by train from London, as well as the cost to get back to Heathrow before you fly home (unless you pay a premium to return the hire car to Heathrow) but you will save money and avoid the feeling of having been conned spoil your holiday which it did for us the first time we hired a car at Heathrow. After one trip, I had to fight long and hard for months after returning home, having been lied to about the size and economy of the car they forced me to upgrade to. I did eventually get some money refunded, but only after relatives in Britain threatened to take legal action on my behalf. The argument they used all the way through was that if I didn't agree to it, I shouldn't have signed the contract.

We have heard of this happening to many people and with different hire car companies so there would be no point in naming and shaming the company we hired from as many use that ploy. If you stand your ground at the check-in counter you will probably get what you want, because the last thing they want you to do is walk away without hiring a car. That said, we have also had good experiences hiring a car at Heathrow Airport, so take this as a warning, and be prepared, rather than as a recomendation not to hire a car at Heathrow.

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