Car rental

Hello everyone,

can somebody recommend a source for rental cars other than Mark Turford? We are flying in on Thursday, and Mark has run out of cars. We will need it for a few weeks, until I can buy one.

Thanks,


Pete

I think Spencer at S&S rents cars. In Riberas next to Bubba's.

Having just spent waaay too much time looking into the various or really lack of options at GDL, I now feel semi-qualified to provide details.

The Franchise Rental Car Cartel at GDL
I went at this group from all sorts of different directions - websites such as Kayak, Orbitz and many of the individual company sites. While most of them will quote daily prices for the various categories of vehicles, one has to do some serious digging (both on the sites and through phone calls) to find out exactly how each handles the insurance issue. As a general rule, none will provide you with the real picture and International Customer Service Depts. don't have a clue. They will give you confident sounding answers but I didn't find a single one that provided accurate information. Additionally not a single one was willing to confirm information in writing and that should be a clue.
1) While the Mexican Regulations require that 3rd Party Liability Insurance is provided by each company, they all require that a renter purchases a supplement to their basic policy and will not allow you to decline this coverage. Wasn't all that expensive in that it ranged from $10.99/day to $13.99/day depending on company and vehicle.
2) The real "sticky wicket" comes when one gets into collision damage waivers, theft and personal injury policies. While one might assume that their credit card will provide this coverage and that you have the option of declining - the answer is basically WRONG! Their real scam is that they will say you can decline BUT they will charge your card varying deposits ranging from $5000USD to the full value of the vehicle you are renting. For example, in the case of one company that I made a reservation with, they were going to charge my card a deposit of $30K. Needless to say, I immediately cancelled that reservation! These non-mandatory policies are virtually mandatory if one is unwilling to let them at very large deposits.
3) So what may look like an attractive daily price up front turns into a much less attractive daily rate when one adds on insurance packages that can range from $30 to $70 per day depending on model and company.

Personal Policies
In our case, we carry the American Express Premium Car Rental Protection which activates at time of rental for a period of up to 42 days at a cost of $24.95 per rental period. This policy provides full collision, theft and personal injury up to $100K with a $0 deductible. None of the franchises was willing to accept a hard copy of this policy naming me as the insurance as a replacement for their insurance even though there are only four countries in the world where this policy isn't accepted and Mexico isn't one of them.

Conclusion
The insurance fees are designed to provide the real profit in the car rental business in Mexico!

S & S Auto
Since we had known Karen & Spencer going back a few years, we decided on renting from them since they offered a flat daily ($55) or weekly ($340) rate that included full coverage insurance. On top of that, we could use our AMEX card and get the additional insurance. Having flown all night and arriving at GDL in the early AM, our friend Steve picked me up and took me to S & S. Handed them my drivers license and AMEX card. I was told that they had taken a photocopy of both and hadn't run my card. And I was off for Patzcuaro driving a Toyota Yaris in very good condition. Two days later when driving back to GDL to pickup Kathy, it dawned on me that by not running my card, my AMEX policy hadn't been activated. We stayed that night at the Lake and swung by S & S on our way back out of town to ask them to at least put a deposit on the card to activate our policy. "Cannot do that since our card machine was taken out a few days ago". "Then how are you going to charge my card when I return the rental?" "We no longer accept cards but you can pay in cash or with a check." Not really a problem since we now knew but might have been a real surprise on the day I returned the car especially because we never take our checkbooks to Mexico! With daily card limits for ATM withdrawals, the $10,500MXN may have been a problem when heading out for my plane.

So for all that may be interested - S & S Auto no longer accepts credit cards.

Gee, don't you feel a little foolish that you didn't tell them you expected to PAY for the rental with the AMEX card?

Only in about 8 different emails dating back to August of 2010 for a trip which ended up being cancelled and in emails this year!