Nice and easy (easyCar)

Member Name: george_lazenby

Product:	easyCar
Date:	21/02/02 (1182 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheaper, decent cars

Disadvantages: You aren't exactly treated like a special customer

The most important thing to remember about Easy Rentacar is that it is an explicitly no-frills car rental service - you are not supposed to be a valued customer, and so you will not be given unctuous service. The main disadvantages of the Easy approach are obvious:

1) There is no choice over what kind of car you can drive
2) They cut costs on the staff, and so signs in offices explicitly warn of delays of up to an hour before you can get your car in peak periods
3) They operate a ruthless policy towards damage to your car - the standard insurance excess is £500.
4) The offices are located in inconvenient places, and the opening hours are not as good as other car rental companies (not 24 hours).
5) You can only book on the Internet - even in an Easy Rentacar office, you have to use an Internet PC to rent a vehicle.

But...

There's no pretence, you know that they're supposed to be cheap. The one car you can hire is the Mercedes A Class, a spacious, stylish and attractive car. The prices are genuinely cheap (as low as a tenner a day, plus the £5 set-up fee), and the nasty excess can be reduced, on payment of £15, right down to £25, which is lower than I think you can generally do it. I've never had to wait that long (20 minutes was the longest) and my local office is in Piccadilly, which is a very easy bit of Manchester to get into, and convenient for public transport if you are transportless having dropped off the car. If you don't have Internet access, it might be a problem - but you have Internet access, friend, because you're reading this review. In the end, I've found it easier to book online than having to phone other car rental companies, and the fact that they only carry one car means there's no question of having to rent a size of car that doesn't suit, or fiddle with various tariffs. They either have a car or they don't, and the earlier you book, the cheaper the car is.

Gen
erally, I consider car rental companies to be the worst for standards and customer care anyway. Given that Easy Rentacar offer, at least in Manchester, an efficient and straightforward service, and most branches of Hertz and Avis are staffed by (in my experience), miserable incompetents, I don't see the problem. I've had Hertz try to rip me off before now, and I had to write to the Chief Exec to get my money back, so the straightforward nature of the Easy Rentacar system seems like a model of transparency.

I have hired from them four times, and have never been charged for any damage. Most car rental companies make the business of checking the car for damage passive - they give you the keys and tell you to come back if there's a problem, probably in the hope you either won't bother at all, or won't bother to walk back to the office (which may be a considerable distance). Easy Rentacar make the checking of the car part of the process - they send you out to check the car and won't finalise the transaction until you return and actively say that you're happy.

On one occasion I found a scratch that wasn't mentioned on the contract and they changed it immediately. The only disadvantage is that I spent three weeks driving a smooth, extras-packed A Class before buying my current car, an old banger for whom the words 'clapped out' could have been devised.

Equally, they check it all with you at the end of the day when you're returning the car. The vehicles are clean and they don't break down, and if you aren't so self-conscious that you can't bear to drive a car with an orange sticker on the side, it's a pretty satisfying drive. All in all, I think that this company, like the airline that started the Easy empire, is a practical and worthwhile alternative to mainstream companies, and will be renting from them again if I need to.

Summary: