Car Rental in Ireland
 

Beware of mis-advertising and hidden costs from Irish car rental companies at Dublin Airport. I recently rented an in-terminal pick-up from Dollar Rental at this location and encountered several discrepancies from my online booking:

"In-terminal" pick-ups require customers to travel to the off-site rental office by shuttle bus to collect their vehicle. We were informed by two separate staff members that this company does not routinely honour car pick-ups advertised and booked as "in-terminal".

For any online quote add:
Euro5.00 for a debit/credit fee
Euro30.00 processing fee to decline optional insurance
Euro 22.91 location service charge

This company obviously uses low quotes to attract business, but does not show all costs and conditions up front when booking. BEWARE.

Thanks for that, I'm about to make some bookings for DUB and will triple-check everything, or go elsewhere. Much appreciated!

I booked with Budget through Auto Europe at Dublin Airport and had fast service and no nasty surprise. All rental companies have their depot outside the terminals, a few minutes away by own shuttle bus.

€5 Credit card fee and €30 Processing fee are standard charges when declining the rental companies insurance. That's across the board throughout the industry. To be honest €30 is cheap compared to some.

Location Charge for Dublin Airport, again across the board. And yes most car rental is off site via shuttle bus as it is at many large airports.

Thanks though for highlighting these points, it must be a handful of days since a similar post found its way onto an Ireland forum, still if folk did do some homework reading the forums they wouldn't be so surprised at the collection desk.

I don't know where you are from, but what you have noted is a difference in business practices between countries. I don't like the practice, but depending on the type of ruling government, each country allows various degrees of discrepancies between advertised and actual cost. I am form a country where this is widely allowed. I don't like one bit having to pay well over 40% of "quoted" price for rental cars guarded by ambiguous asterisks, but that is what it is if I want to deal with the industry.

This is probably why I'll go with Dan Dooley. They are about $200 more (for 9 days) than Hertz or Advantage for the car with the parameters I need, but their price is supposedly one with no hidden charges. I wouldn't have know about them if not for this Forum.