car hire. how hard can it be?

[SenoraPostrophe]

this hard.

one company will not let me book child seats online and says I have to phone after I've made the reservation. because child seats are just an optional extra for us parents after all.

one company wants to charge me £10 more if I say I am Spanish resident (which I am). surely that's illegal? presumably it's to do with the high insurance costs or something.

two companies have javascript errors all over their site and the auto form stuff doesn't work properly.

one company (the cheapest) won't let me hire car seats for a one way rental, but doesn't have a terminal in liverpool airport (the only way I could do a return rental).

grrrr.

Try hertz they do car seats online in the booking I'm pretty sure. Or it may be avis

yeah, but they cost about twice as much as everyone else. actually its hard to tell because they will only show me priuces in euros and my brain is fuzzy now.

avis was ok if I fly into liverpool, but that means getting in at 11.30 (travelling alone with both babes, not sure it's worth it). liverpool is also further away.

I would ask a family member to pick me up but can't bring the car seats.

I do go on don't I?

anybody in norfolk/essex/lincolnshire with 2 car seats fancy picking me up for 60 quid?

that's 11.30 at night.

What time did you want to get in, SP? Liverpool is quite near here - if you did the avis one at 11.30 you could come here overnight and go on the next day?

Why can't you bring the car seats? Just too big and heavy and complicated?

yes - too big and heavy and complicated. I could bring one. the other one is the size of a small car itself.

sorry, thanks for the offer.

I'm also worried about having two sleepy and grumpy babies on a plane!

Senora, I do sympathise. I have been looking into booking a car today, picking up and dropping off at different locations in the uk. With the airports and times I was thinking about, it couldnt be done. The flight arrives too late at bournemouth airport for anyone to hire me a car. I could do my trip the other way around but flying into Manchester was way too expensive and the flight times back from Bournemouth meant cutting the holiday short by 3 days. I think im not going to bother going to England and spend my holiday here. [frustrated icon needed]

come and stay with us and fly from granada - ryanair doing super cheap flights to liverpool & stansted. monarch fly to gatwick too if that's easier for you.

By the way i did find one website which was ok, www.europacar

What are your other airport alternatives?

stansted. flying back from liverpool because the time is better (already booked - an old school friend is flying over with me), but stansted is much closer to the relis.

perhaps I could come and house sit, hahaha . To be honest this will be my first visit back to England and I don't know if I can face the tour of duty. It will mean having to cross the whole country really. My immediate family are here. Anyway enough hijacking for one night and back to your dilemma, could you fly in and stay in hotel over night and pick up rental car in morning or get a relative to hire car for you and pick you up with car seats? If I do go to England, that was the only way round it if I wanted to fly into bournemouth at 12 o'clock at night.

carjet do stansted - they work well in Spain IME, are they one you've tried?

You will let me know if I can help with return journey from L'pool at all? (Not sure how, if you're renting from stansted and presumably dropping seats off there too, but I will if I can )

carwithaview - "'Car with a view' is an online car hire booking agent for Hertz, Budget, Alamo, Dollar, Thrifty, Europcar and Avis. For families hiring a car extras such as child seats, roof racks and other accessories are available at many car hire branches and are charged locally in UK."

UK car hire

(bet you've found all these already!)

I know that it doean't help, but I have generally found that you have to book the car and then arrange the car seats once you have the booing reference. And even if you do manage it all online I would still phone the pick-up location and confirm.

Having travelled on my own with 2 littlies though I can confirm that actually booking the hire car is the worst bit, and I've usually found that staff at the terminals are very sympathetic (and help getting luggage/toddlers to the car etc). They will insist that you check the car seat installation though (which i would anyway!).