Car Hire Experts please

[rtimmorris]

Hi we need a car hire for about a month. Miami Airport charges $3.25 on top for each day. Shall we have 1 day hire and then hire again from South Beach location where we are staying? Shall we get a cab from the airport to South Beach and then rent a car there for the duration? ..... or shall we do somehting else. HURRY, we fly on Tuesday morning!!!!!!!!!

[Matt]

I would suggest collecting you car at your final destination if you do not want to pay the MIA surcharge.

However, the 3.25 daily fee will probably cost less than a cab and it would be more convenient to collect the car at the airport.

Matt

[starkie]

I would pay the extra $3.25 at Miami Airport and make life easy for yourselves. South Beach is a long way from the airport and a taxi there and back would cost more than $100. Stayed on Ocean Drive at South Beach last year and did not come across any car-hire companies. (I wasn't looking for one either though!!!) Hope this info helps.

Have a great time.

Julie

[Snapper]

For a month long rental I might look at doing the 1 day from Miami and then swapping the car at South Beach. I have a personal dislike of anything like 'facility' fees (John and Roger - this is a dig at the car companies, not you ... I know there is nothing you can do about this).

I have 2 experiences of doing this. One was about 2 weeks ago in Las Vegas where I swapped from Roger and John's company to a direct rent with Alamo (to avoid an excessive drop charge on the drive back to Orlando). The other was today, where I swapped from the Alamo direct rent back to John and Roger's company.

In Las Vegas it was, to be honest, aweful. Alamo were terrible. There was a queue of about 100 people and 3 desk agents. We passed the time by laughing and joking with the other people in the queue and cheering whenever someone made it to a desk. I don't think the humor quite translated well!! All told we were queuing at Alamo for 2 1/2 hours. Add onto this the half hour to and from McCarran and it was over a 3 hour task. Realistically it cost us about a half day. It would have been very easy to get hugely annoyed and frustrated at a queue that long.

Today was a completely different story. I had to head to the airport anyhows to drop someone off, and the drive from Highlands to MCO and back, including the drop-off and car switch took bang on an hour. There were two people in the queue at Dollar and a desk full of agents.

The reason I included all this spiel is that I don't think it's an obvious call. Personally I think I would be tempted with the one day rental then the swap at south beach. The $100 (ish) saved would buy me a new pelican case for the camera gear or an external drive for my laptop or a nice meal out somewhere. The flip side is that whilst it works out a good plan on paper there is always the chance that it could cost you a half day of your holiday. You've kind of got to know how you value your own time to make that decision.

[blott]

I'm not sure there are any extra charges if you rent from the link at the top of each forum page, at least not in Florida. Perhaps John could clarify that though?

[floridadreamvilla.co.uk]

There are Customer Facility Charges that have been imposed on the car hire companies at a few Florida airport locations - Miami being one (Orlando, Sanford and Tampa do not have the charge) - see http://www.uscarhire.co.uk/CustomerFacilityCharges.aspx for more details.

This is the charge they are trying to minimise by picking up from a non airport location like South Miami Beach (Eden Roc Hotel) where the charge does not apply.

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by blott
I'm not sure there are any extra charges if you rent from the link at the top of each forum page, at least not in Florida. Perhaps John could clarify that though?
[/quote]

[Katys Grandad]

We had an interesting experience a couple of weeks ago when we collected a car from Fort Myers airport. There is a Dollar desk within the terminal which I have used in the past. When you use it you are given all the documentation for your car and the courtesy bus takes you directly to the car in the Dollar site whcih is no more than 2 minutes away from the terminal. Alternatively, you can opt to take the bus to the same site and do the paperwork in the on-site office.

For no particular reason we took the bus to the site and did the paperwork there, walked a few feet to the car and drove away. The point I am trying to get to is that I didn't pay the Customer Facility Charge. However, I was told that I would have done so if I had done the paperwork at the desk within the terminal. Whether this a mistake or not I can't tell but I will be doing the hire that way in the future.

Has anybody else had the same experience?

[greenpete]

We stayed on Ocean Drive in May this year, we took a taxi from the airport, $25. Next day we picked up hire car from Alamo. Their office is situated top end of Collins Avenue. No problems. We dropped car off at airport.

There are many car hire firms.
Anna


<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by rtimmorris
Hi we need a car hire for about a month. Miami Airport charges $3.25 on top for each day. Shall we have 1 day hire and then hire again from South Beach location where we are staying? Shall we get a cab from the airport to South Beach and then rent a car there for the duration? ..... or shall we do somehting else. HURRY, we fly on Tuesday morning!!!!!!!!!
[/quote]

[imported_n/a]

A word of warning when useing valet parking in miami area,last year picking up the car from south beach we where stood in the que as the couple in front had there car stolen they had handed in there keys at valet parking,the keys where stolen also the car,thy where haveing to prove that they was not in on the crime,as they could give back any keys, they had to go miami airport to sort it out and to see if they could another car.
allenc