Car hire with child seats in UK- help please!

[madmarriedNika]

I'm flying over from sunny NI to visit family in S. England, with DD (11 months) and DS (3yo). I'll be on me own with the DCs as DH has to work. I need to hire a car with 2 child seats as can't bring both on the plane (or even one probably, as too much to juggle methinks) but so far when I've looked into car hire with e.g. hertz they are quoting me £118 for 2 car sets for the 8 days I need them!!! (on top of the normal car hire fees).

Does anyone know of car hire companies that charge less for car seat hire? Please help!
I've asked family etc. if they can borrow one from anyone but no joy yet.

Thanks xx

Many thanks!

PS. sorry have also posted this in UK section!

There are some car rentals who do not provide the child seat. You can hire a van in such a condition so that you can easily adjust your family during travel Once I have hire car from LU car rental, they have good services with all the cars and vans insured..

I have used avis in france and hired a carseat, it was nowhere near as expensive as you've been quoted, although it was a few years ago.

Although you would check your own carseats into the hold and collect them at the carousel the other end, so you could use a trolley for both, it might be all right - fold up pushchair and put it on trolley, put baby in sling, 3 year old walks?

I have paid a fortune (once!) in Ireland. I think it was ?40 for about 4 days for one seat. Since then we have taken them with us as hold baggage, or now they just need booster seats, hand baggage.

Can you buy cheap car seats and have them delivered to your family? And then have them hang on to them for subsequent visits?

We had the same problem, so I bought a couple of car seats for about £40 each and my in laws just keep them at their house for whenever we come over.

I would look into buying basic ones here or asking family if they or anyone they know have suitable ones you can borrow.

In my experience, car seats provided by car hire companies are not only ridiculously overpriced, but also old, dirty, often not the ones you requested (in terms of age/stage) and generally aren't to be trusted - if they actually have the ones you ordered at all. I have known them to treat car seat bookings as 'requests' rather than contractual bookings, so if that car hire office happens to be out of stock, hard luck.

Admittedly, I haven't needed them for a few years now, so I suppose there is a chance things could have improved. I doubt it, though.