Car hire in majorca

[MildredH]

We have booked our first holiday with 7 month old baby to Majorca. Going to a lovely hotel we have been to before but is 1 hour drive from Palma airport.

Plan would be to take our buggy and then rent a car with a baby seat included.

DH panicking as he has seen a watchdog item about how a lot of car seats abroad are not safe, although he admits that some of the reasons they wouldn't meet UK standards were slight rip in cover etc.. which for 2 journeys would not compromise safety.

Can anyone recommend a good company at Palma airport? Any experience of using a rented car seat? Only 4 day stay so happy to pay a little more to ensure safety.

Thanks in advance.

Bump

We travel to Majorca a lot, usually get a car 'on airport' from either Hertz, Avis or Europcar, whichever is the cheapest. Try and avoid Goldcar, I seem to recall they ripped us off a couple of years ago. Make sure you get a car on airport, not near airport, or you'll be waiting ages for the bus to come to take you there. No experience of rented car seats, but I have seen them stacked up in the car hire offices, guess you could pick the one you want??

One thing we definitely do is take out excess insurance before we go, we use insurance4Carhire.com - costs around £39.99 for a whole year policy for hiring cars abroad - it is much cheaper than the excess insurance they charge you at the airport and covers anything not covered by the general car hire policy.

We have just returned from Majorca. We hired a car when we got there from Vanrell. Found them to be brilliant and found that they had the biggest choice of cars. HTH

I've always found off airport car hire fine, buses straight away - queues can be longer at on airport places anyway. Second the advice to avoid Gold Car and also Record.

I always go through carjet.com and they will sell you excess insurance for 2 per day, instead of up to 8 euro per day when you get there. We used Centuro (sp?) last time we were there - they are off airport but everything went smoothly.

Can you take your own car seat if you are concerned that the car hire ones aren't safe?

Other thing to watch for is the fuel policy. It is quite hard to avoid 'full to empty' in Spain and Mallorca etc, where you end up buying fuel that you might not use.

We did well last time because we were staying quite near to the airport but had a couple of local trips, and also went to Soller, Pollensa and the East Coast on three separate days, so the fuel light had just come on when we got back to the car hire place. Result!

Thank you all for help. Will avoid those mentioned.

Crikey- that fuel policy is a pain. I vaguely recall it when I went for a weekend trip a few years back but the duration fell under their cut off for that and we did full to full. We will only be doing 100 miles so will really lose out.

Did think about taking car seat but taking whole buggy so just another thing.. I am less worried tbh as I think if it looks ok is likely to be ok..

Don't use a company called firefly, they are hertz budget arm and left us waiting 2 hours for our car when we went to Spain recently. The service was shocking.

Thanks something.. Good to know.