Alternative to Car Hire??

[gbuttery]

Hi all,
Are any of your members lucky enough to stay 1-2 months in Florida? And if so what do you do for car hire?

We are contemplating a longer stay now we've retired (hurrah!) but car hire would be a ridiculous price. Is it possible to take out a very short term lease, or is there some alternative? It has been suggested we buy a car and then resell it! But I don't think that's a very practical idea.

Any help gratefully received.

Gill

[Ms Kas]

Hi Gill

We sepnd 6 weeks at our Villa and sorry to say the only way we get around is by Rental vehicle.

It is a huge sum of money but based on a weekly rate it is quite good in thre scheme of things, it's just that 6 weeks whacks up our expenses. We certainly could not hire a car in the UK for the price nor Europe.

There is we feel no way round it as we considered purchasing a vehicle but storage etc . it was not in our opinion a viable route to take.

We had thought about lease on short term but we only thought about it and did not go into any details.

Carolyn

[kerrigan]

We go for a month at a time, but always take car hire. It's a necessary part of our holiday. Besides, without transport, we'd not be able to get out & about. Much as I love my villa, I wouldn't want to spend my whole time stuck there!
Hazel.

[Ms Kas]

We go for a month at a time, but always take car hire. It's a necessary part of our holiday. Besides, without transport, we'd not be able to get out & about. Much as I love my villa, I wouldn't want to spend my whole time stuck there!
Hazel.

Absolutely Hazel , neither would we and I wouldn't fancy cycling back from Publix with all my shopping

Carolyn

[Shirley G]

We did 3 months last year and will do the same for this year. It cost about £1,700 in total which is a lot but the alternative is buy the car, insure it, take a driving test in the US and then re sell it before you come back home.

Too much hassle for me

[KevinT]

From the posts I have read on other forums Gill it seems that rental is still the way to go for longer stays. Most rental companies appear to have a maximum rental period (five or six weeks at a time?....Shirley might know?) so you would probably need to swap cars at least once during your stay but that's not too much of a problem as all companies normally have at least one depot around Kissimmee as well as the airports.

Here is an extract from one persons experience of "buying" in Florida. Not conclusive.....but gives a good idea of the problems encountered......

My husband and I bought a jeep in Miami in May of this year. We just went out to have a look and ended up buying when we were not really prepared for the insurance problems. We found the salesmen very pushy, not at all like what we have been used to in the UK. After about 3 hours in the showroom, we decided on a jeep, then we were told about all the extras, $500.00 charged by the showroom for the sale, $150 for the licence tag, etc. etc. Also when you factor in the sales tax, the price really jumps up.

After buying our car, we were told that we could not leave with it until we showed proof of insurance. It took me nearly a week to find someone who would insure us to drive the jeep, as both of us have UK driving licences. I searched the web, made a lot of phone calls, made a lot of repeat phone calls and ended up using All State.

The price for the two of us is around $2000 a year. The reason it is very expensive is because we both do not have US driving licences. We were told that if we obtained US driving licences then the price would be half that. Insurance is quite high in the states because there are so many new cars on the roads and a lot of accidents.

We both have been driving for many years, but we found out that producing no claims letters from other countries and by producing evidence that we had never had speeding tickets from the police, did not matter.

We now have to both take US driving tests, ie the eye test, the written test and then the actual manual driving test. Both of us do not want this hassle, but we realise that we have to do it in order for our insurance to come down.

Also, our insurance is reduced each month when we phone them and tell them to reduce the coverage to just stationary coverage. That means that the car is going to be locked up in the garage, in a gated community. When we are going back to Florida, we phone them again and tell them to increase the coverage.

When we arrive now in Florida, we either pick a car hire up at the airport, and drop it off at a location near our house and on the way back, we would pick the car up at a location near our house and drop it off at the airport. We have also used a town car company to pick us up at the airport and bring us to the house. Both of these systems have worked quite well.

It is a dilema to be in but I have a green card and I hope to move to Florida permanently one day. Therefore that is why we bought a car. If I was just going once or twice a year I think I would just hire a car. We have learnt a lot from our experience and we are wiser now for the next buy caring experience.

[Shirley G]

We have always booked our cars through Orlando Villas car hire and have used Alamo. The maximum rental period for one booking is 56 days. We normally drop off the old car and pick up a new one from Disney Care Care. It's a smaller depot with fewer cars but the switch is done in a few minutes and we are off again.

[Ms Kas]

Same as Shirley with Alamo although our max has only been 45 days

But it is no problem .

Also used Budget for 42 days, they gave us 2 agreements , one that ran for 28 days and then one for the remainder of the time . No going back to the airport , just had to phone in with the mileage etc. I thought "this will be a problem cus no one will know what we are doing and the system will then ask us to go in and sort it at the desk"

Have to admit could not have been more wrong as it all worked as clockwork and very efficiently. Just took a few minutes .

Hope this info helps,
Carolyn

[florida rose]

My Management also run a private hire / taxi service.

Maybe having a taxi service for shopping or if you need to go anywhere special might be an option - you only pay for what you use

You may be able to negotiate if you use this service on a regular basis.

[Shirls]

Can't wait to have this worry

[gbuttery]

Thanks to all.
Looks like its a hire car after all. I certainly don't fancy the buying and selling route. (We don't have anywhere we could store a car)
Instead of thinking just how much it costs, we'll have to think how much gas and electricity we're saving by not being in the UK over the winter!

Regards, Gill

[kerrigan]

Swings & roundabouts, Jill!
Hazel.