Holiday rental car: should we buy or hire a car seat for 4 year old?

[Cucumberscarecrow]

We purchased a Trunki Boostapak seat for an upcoming holiday with our 4 year old. It arrived yesterday but the seat is really hard and uncomfortable and the backpack is too heavy for a 4 year old to carry for long. It seems therefore to do two jobs badly so I'm going to return it.

I was thinking of buying a cheap backless booster seat but am still uneasy about the lack of head protection.

It costs such a lot to hire a car seat and the quality is usually pretty poor so I'm in a quandary. What do most people do on holiday?

Hire, every time. High-backed booster has got to be safer. Iwouldn't ever use one of those trunki things, and a booster only in a real emergency.

I'm going abroad in June and taking the car seats that I use just now with me with me (DC's will be 6 months and 2yrs)

We got a brilliant inflatable booster which weighs practically nothing so ideal for flying. Available from halfords but you can get them from usual on-line stores. It is called Bubblebum and is ideal for when you need a 'spare booster.

Does the airline allow you to bring them on the plane (usually in the hold) for free? We live abroad and bought ours in the UK and the airline allows us to bring ours free of cost. We usually shrink wrap it for protection.

Yes, I think that we can have them stowed for free but I was worried about damage. I'm not sure how I'd shrink wrap. We're flying out of Gatwick so I guess they may have a shrink wrapping service but back from a tiny airport with very limited facilities.

Buzzard, the more I read about backless boosters, the more I worry about using them. Maybe I should just suck it up and pay the extra money to hire one.

No idea where you are going but any chance you could buy one locally and hire only for 24 hrs we will be doing this when we go to the states

In france once my husband left me and the kids at the train station, drove the hire car to the hypermarche and bought a car seat for about 25 quid. A perfectly good full size one. Too many bad experiences with hire places.

Sometimes we take sometimes hire. I wouldn't want a 4 year old not in a proper seat with head protection abroad as many places are a lot less road safety regulated and people drive faster etc. also if your driving on wrong side on road there's always more chance of errors.

Oh and we have always had only maxi cosi or britax seats given when hired. Last one at Xmas we had a britax kid plus sict for our 4 year old given and a maxi cosi axis for 2 year old. I was happy with the conditions they were in