has anyone researched this or been through this experience? i would be interested in your opinions or findings --i am planning on a one week rental in madrid -many thanks

[ 02-04-2002: Message edited by: MadridMan ]

We rented a car in Madrid for 10 days (to use to get out of Madrid actually, not whilst we were staying there).

We booked it via Aerocity (and the very very helpful Celia, who went out of her way to make sure all our questions were answered). We picked the car up from an Atesa office near Atocha - it was one of many places we could have picked it up.

We booked the smallest, cheapest car (a Citroen Saxo), but ended up with a Peugeot 206, and actually ended up paying slightly less than originally quoted.

This may not be the cheapest rental, but it was very reassuring to us novices to know that we could contact Celia if we had a problem, knowing that she would be able to sort us out.

As it turned out, we picked the car up with little hassle (other than our rubbish Spanish letting us down when talking to the mechanic who released the car to us once we had done the paperwork in the office), and drove out of Madrid like a dream. We made our way back in good style too.

I too would be interested in hearing about other's car hire experiences.

Jo

Question - is car rental a new part of Aerocity's services? Celia is absolutely super and having her help as a back-up "just-in-case" is a terrific selling point!

To answer Chuck's question - I have always used Avis in the past when renting a car in Spain - go to thier international website for details. However - that might change if Aerocity is renting cars and the prices are comprable or less!!!

www.holidayautos.com --> probably the best rental in europe, they're a broker and work together with almost all of the big rental companies. full coverage insurance is always included and the cars are good, coming from sixt, europcar, etc...

For my trip to Spain last Xmas/New Years, I spent hours and hours on the internet trying to find the cheapest car rental rates. Believe or not, the cheapest I found was with www.alamo.com. Note that you pick up the car with an outfit called "Atenza", not Alamo. I suggest you visit the Alamo web site and check out their prices. On that last trip, the rental came to about $15 a day, however, they were offering a so-called "super seguro" for an additional $3/day, which meant that you did not have to pay a single penny if anything ever happened to the car: theft, accident etc. I did take the super-seguro so it ended up being about $18/day.

Puna

No, car hire is not a new part of Aerocity's service. It's over a year since we booked our car through them.

I need to add the link for Chuck don't I? Or I could always advocate a search on the site for 'Aeorocity' where he will be swamped with info on their services. I think a search including the words Aeorocity and car hire might throw up something more specific, I'm sure I've talked about it before (but can't remember if I have!).

Jo

Try http://www.carjet.com. After careful research, I found them to offer the best price on car rental for our trip last September.