Auriga Crown/Alicante- No new Fleet!

'Its alright suggesting you can ring Do You Spain whilst at the desk but when you have already waited 20 mins + to be served and have a queue of people behind you, the last thing you want is to be further delayed trying to work out who is telling the truth.'

 Russ & Louise  

Hi,

In June, after a late evening flight,  we were 6th in the queue at the Atesa counter at Alicante and waited 90mins+ to be served. 

A lot of time was used by the 2 lots of folks ahead of us  who were turned away because they were 'not on the on list'.

Phone calls, copies of vouchers, printouts of confirmation of payments in advance meant nothing. Paper work was ignored. The computer list ruled!!!!

So ..we waited and waited whilst the arguements raged. 

We were lucky ..we got the car we booked.

Must admit..if we had been one of the ones turned away I would have argued and argued my point regardless of the queue behind me .

Hello

I might be a bit of a different view on car hire in Spain. My husband and I have resided on the Costa del Sol for the last 6 years and own a small rent-a-car company. I'm not touting for business so I won't even tell you who we are.

We experienced our worst winter ever at the back end of 08 going into 09 at the hands of the big car hire companies and the wonderful Do you Spain. In general there was an over supply of cars and not enough people renting due to lack of tourism during the winter months in a recession, hence the reason you could obtain very cheap car hire, naturally this couldn't continue and the leasing and finance companies have pulled the plug on the likes of the big car hire companies, which now means there isn't enough cars to go around and the prices have gone sky high. With the economic situation in Spain being just as bad as the rest of Europe if not worse, I wouldn't imagine that anything is going to change much in the next year or so in regards to supply of cars - the Spanish banks and finance companies just won't take the risk.

I my opinion you would always be better going to a car hire company directly rather than using an agent like DYS, at the end of the day they are just a middle man taking money on behalf of someone else and taking a cut along the way.

Hi ladyV, welcome. Yes, I think our members these days are well aware from the many posts in many threads, not always posted in the Driving in Spain ones, many are in General Chat or the newbies sections, that the banks haven't financed car hire companies as much as they (the car hire companies) would like recently.

I've often checked prices however with Carjet & DYS compared with booking direct & I've found booking direct hasn't been cheaper. I guess car hire companies give the likes of Carjet & DYS huge discounts to get bookings through them so, even though Carjet & DYS obviously make something it's still cheaper to book through an agent.

Having been quoted serious money to rent cars recently as we're in Spain over a month each time every couple of months we invested in our own car in June.

** Regarding advertising, which of course you aren't, can I suggest that you put your website as your signature as many do here to help generate revenue for you. That is totally acceptable. You can add text explaining why members should ask you for a quote too, just a couple of lines. Have a look around, see others signatures. Many are blatant with massive text but that's frowned on somewhat.

Another update regarding possible refund from Do You Spain.

Credit where credit's due ,I've recently received a £155 refund from DYS due to the difference in my car rental agreement.(see start  of thread )

It was something I'd written off but out of the blue I receive a letter from my bank confirming the transaction & I've checked it online too.

So well done all those at DYS & thank you, your credit has been restored !

    Andy