Mittens 2017 - Hafnir, Iceland, 15-22 July

Started by AGA, Fri 17/02/2017 07:48:42

Previous topic - Next topic

AGA

Hey Disco, would you be available to rent a car?  Being American, I assume you can drive?  If finances are a problem we could probably work out some payment in advance.

Disco

Hmm, checking into it. I am not necessarily opposed, but would likely need a refresher course on manual (I have not touched a stick in about 17 years!), but I expect it would come back quickly.

Also, is $600-1000 USD per week normal in Iceland? I nearly fainted when the prices came up on three different sites. I guess living less than 100 miles from Detroit has some benefits.

AGA

I think car operation in general is significantly more expensive in Europe than the US.  Did you ever rent a car in Europe before?  And Iceland is apparently one of the more expensive countries in Europe.  So sounds about right!

Disco

Nah, I have never rented in Europe... only a handful of times in Michigan and California. Admittedly I never really felt 100% comfortable with the idea, which is why I casually left my name out of the car rental discussion :P

Passenger van?

AGA

If it's a similar price to get two smaller cars rather than one bigger van, that might be better (as Linus says, to offer more flexibility/freedom).  But of course that's dependent on two people being willing to drive.  But if a van's cheaper, then if Linus is willing to drive it you could avoid being discomforted...

Disco

I have been convinced... Not just out of pure necessity, but also because I want to see you all keep smiling, keep shining...Knowing you can always count on me, for sure...That's what friends are for.


Quote from: AGA on Sat 13/05/2017 11:59:08
we could probably work out some payment in advance.

Since this is a European rental, I would appreciate that :D

AGA

So rentalcars.com has four seaters for â,¬260 per week.  If we took two of those, that would work out to â,¬65 per head.  Would people be okay with that?  That would give us much more flexibility of movement, and potentially allow us to explore the Icelandic wilderness more freely.

If that's okay with everyone, would Disco and 2ma2 both be willing to rent one each?

Disco

#67
That sounds good to me.

I shall be arriving at 04:50 (!!!) on the 15th. Departure is 15:00 on the 22nd.

Esseb

â,¬65 sounds good to me too. I should look into flights also probably.

Snarky


AGA

That's most of us then. Yamipanda and 2ma2, what about you?

We should probably try to make a booking ASAP to avoid missing out on relatively low prices.

Privateer Puddin'


2ma2

Car rental is fairly expensive overall in Europe, mainly because regulations require recently released rides (alliteration a-hoy!); hence my like of Rent-a-wreck here in Sweden, they're perfectly good cars, around 5-10 years on the road, and much more affordable.

WOW have a bad rep here, probably equivalent to Ryanair and their ilk. There's of course a bias towards negative reviews since happy/content consumers rarely voice their opinion. The main issue seems to be that if anything DOES go wrong, like a delay with missed connections, damage or lost luggage etc., you'll have to bitch and hassle with an outsourced customer service that just dgaf. Amusingly enough, our organization for customer protection (Råd & Rön) has a "black list" of companies in different sectors that advice you against using Icelandair but not WOW - the former refused to reimburse a lost tent, claiming it was packed inappropriately. Make of that what you will ;)

$260 is an excellent fee for a week. Almost suspiciously low. Either way, it appears to have been booked full at the moment of writing :-[ We've got 4-5 seaters from â,¬410-460. I looked through the rental agreements for Firefly and Greenmotion. Both offer unrestricted distance with full-out full-in fuel policy, all good. There's a deposit of â,¬2200-2500 upon retrieval, though, which is fully reimbursable of course, but reeeaaally effin' hefty. I'll mail a couple of rental firms to ask how this works in practice. It's all and well if you use a credit card, but I'm not entirely comfortable waltzing around with â,¬2000+ on my debit card :(

AGA

Yeah well, enough complaining about WOW Air, since some of us have already booked with them!

I can help with a huge deposit if necessary.  I work as a contractor, so I'm obliged for tax reasons to have massive amounts of tax money saved up all year.  As long as I get the deposit back, that's all fine.

yamipanda

Sure, that's fine. I don't really know what rentals are supposed to cost, so if the rest of you think it's ok I trust you there. XD

2ma2

The money is not the issue as much as where it's kept. Still, it appears as most vendors require a credit rather than debit card upon retrieval. I'll look into attaching credit to my card to see if it is worth the hassle visavi the hassle of NOT having it... In the meantime, SADCars offers a â,¬370 Toyota Yaris rental with debit card but:

  • You must buy the insurance bundle of â,¬28/day (â,¬196) - which I'm fine with, I'm not keen on replacing rock-shot windshields and whatnot.
  • You deposit â,¬1000 (refundable) - which is much less worrisome to have sitting on your debit account.
  • You pay â,¬50 (non-refundable) - kinda annoying, so I'll weigh it against the banks fees for a year of attached credit.
They also have a 9-seater in their fleet, but it didn't show up in my quotes, so I'm mailing to see if it's available at the 15th to 22nd.

AGA

So what do we think?  We really need to make a booking soon, or they'll only have extremely priced cars left, if any...  Your most recent suggestion sounds fine, if you prefer it to credit attachment.

Disco

While Linus waits to hear back on his mails, I have found some better rates than my previous attempts through the car hire links on the Keflavik Airport official website.

Renting with Budget from 11:00 on the 15th to 11:00 on the 22nd is giving me a handful of cars between 320-400 EUR. Even an automatic is not substantially greater in price (and one less thing for me to worry about :P), and I could not find anything on outrageous deposits.

I may have been selecting some inopportune pick up/drop off times in previous searches. These prices are within the margin of error.

AGA

Budget are a big name, so I'd hope they're reliable!  Price sounds fine to me.

Esseb


SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk