When my fiancee's brother was getting married this year, the car we had at the time was on it's last legs so i decided i would hire a car for the weekend to make sure that we made the wedding which was about 45 miles from where we stay. Also i thought it would be a bit more comfort for us than turning up in our poor old V W Polo, especially with our wedding outfits and other bags with us. I had received an email from Hertz Car Rental company who had got my details through my membership of the Nectar reward scheme. The offer was to do with renting out the new model of the Ford Focus which was newly released at the time.

I clicked on a link on the email i had received which transferred me to the website www.hertz.co.uk. On the website you choose which kind on car you prefer, which in my case was the Ford Focus as i was getting a slightly improved deal on this model. You type in the location that you want to pick up and drop off the car, for instance if you live near an airport that will probably be your closest location and also the dates you require the car. I found the website was very easy to use and completed my booking before printing out my confirmation.

I arranged to collect the car at Prestwick Airport which is 10 miles from where i stay. On arrival i had a short wait to be served, only maybe about five minutes or so but that was understandable as a couple of flights had just arrived in before i got to the airport. The man who served me was helpfull but he did try and sell me extras as i will go through later and i can't help but feel someone arriving at the airport from another country may well have signed up without really knowing what they were signing. After the company checked my driving licence and i paid my rental in full i was issued with the paperwork and keys for the car. Then i was given directions and a bay number to get to the car which was maybe a five minute walk. I feel it would have been a nice touch and would make you feel more like a valued customer if they had someone bring the vehicle over to the front of the building while you are going through the paperwork.

The car which i hired was a Ford Focus 1.6 which was the in the third group on Hertz scale. This car was just a matter of weeks old and had just over 300 miles on the clock when i collected it. The car was absolutely spotless, it had obviously been valeted outside and inside for my collection. The one thing that i thought was strange for a car as new as this was that all four of it's wheeltrims were missing. I had a quick look round about the car just to make sure there was nothing else missing and no scratches etc just incase they would be looking for anything when i returned the car.

At first i was booking the Ford Focus for 2 days, collecting the car on the Thursday and dropping it back off on the Saturday. The price for this was £83.40 for the 2 days inclusive of VAT. Then something strange happened that i can't understand. I entered new dates to see how much it would cost to keep the car for another day and take it back on the Sunday. The result was that the cost was £73.68 inclusive of VAT for 3 days! Sounds strange but yes it did cost about a tenner less to have the car for an extra day so i went ahead and booked for 3 days. When you collect your car the company do try and hit you with a lot of extra costs. One of these is that they asked if i wanted to pay for a tank of petrol upfront. The charge for this was going to be an incredible £90 about double what the cost would be to fill up the tank yourself. I politely declined stating that i would fill the car up with petrol before returning. Also another charge was going to be £30 if i wanted to add a second driver. Again i declined as i was going to do most of the driving myself anyway, hardly worth paying £30 just for my fiancee to have a wee shot of the car.