Are you hiring a car in 2025? Use this essential guide to ensure you avoid car hire pitfalls.

1. Excess Protection – A rental company will often try to sell a range of extra products and services when a traveller arrives to pick up their hire car. The most expensive of these is usually excess protection which protects a hirer from having to pay the excess if the hire car is damaged or stolen, even if it’s not their fault, which can be as much as £2,000.

Buying this from the rental company will cost on average over £2001 for a week’s hire, according to a 12-country costs survey1 analysing the costs of six international rental companies.

If a consumer chooses not to buy the rental company’s excess protection, they will usually need to leave the excess amount on a credit card. They will still need to do this if a customer has an independent car hire excess protection policy from a specialist insurance provider, like iCarhireinsurance.com.

2. Check the Vehicle and Take Photos and Video of Existing Damage - To avoid unfair damage charges, car hirers should check vehicles thoroughly at pick up, taking photographic or video evidence, and ensure any damage is noted on the rental agreement. Do the same at drop-off.

A 2024 Opinium survey2 we commissioned, found that one in four (41%) hire car drivers found damage on a hire car not highlighted on the checkout sheet, and 16%3 had charges added to their bill which they weren’t expecting. Yet only half3 take photos at pick-up and return, and fewer (21%)2 take a video.

You can download our free travel app for all travellers, called ‘iCarhire’, that helps users take detailed photographs of the rental car which can be stored within the app and used as evidence in the event of a dispute or claim. These can all be filed under a specific journey name, and then broken down into before and after the rental period, making it simple to reference at a later date if necessary.

3. Fourteen Day Rule - To contest a damage claim made by a rental company, the hirer should query it within fourteen days with the company. If a satisfactory outcome is not reached, check if the hire company is a member of the British Vehicle Rental Leasing Association (BVRLA) in the UK, whose members are expected to adhere to its mandatory Codes of Conduct. Alternatively, the European Car Rental Conciliation Service (ECRCS) offers a free service to help with unresolved complaints and member companies are bound by the decision reached by the conciliation service. It will investigate whether one of its members has breached its code of practice, which includes billing, vehicle condition and before and after-inspections. Member companies of the ECRCS include Alamo, Avis, Budget, Enterprise, Europcar, Firefly, Hertz, Maggiore, National Car Rental, Sixt and Thrifty. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent body in the US.

The UK International Consumer Centre (UKICC) also provides free advice for consumers who encounter problems when buying goods and services from outside of the UK. The UKICC also works with the European Consumer Centres Network (ECC-Net), which has a free service to help resolve disputes.

4. Pay by Credit Card – If you use a credit card for the booking and deposit, it may be possible to make a claim via the card provider under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. The payment must be for more than £100 (and less than £30,000) and evidence provided that the company did not comply with their legal obligations or misled you.

In most cases hiring a car is a great experience, but just in case you’re one of the unlucky ones, it’s really important to be aware of this checklist.