Renting a car in Greece

Old Jun 24th, 2017, 04:50 PM
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Renting a car in Greece

Sorry for the duplicate message! I realized that I failed to tag Greece in my previous message and couldn't figure out how to edit it.

Curious as to your opinions about renting a car directly from an agency vs via our hotel. I read online comments about each of our hotels where the hotel arranged for the rental car for the guest. All the comments were positive. Did any one on this forum arrange for your car via the hotel? Did it work out? Pros? (a big pro is the fact that the car is delivered and picked up at the hotel!) Cons? We will have a need for a car in Athens for a day trip (so would return it the same day although pick up would be in town and drop off at the airport), Santorini and Paros.

With this said, we are open to doing public transportation or cabs if reasonable in Santorini and Paros-- thoughts? BTW we are a family of five.

Thanks!
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Old Jun 24th, 2017, 05:26 PM
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My impression -- it probably depends greatly on the hotel and the agency. I made arrangements to rent one car through a hotel (the Grotta on Naxos) and was very pleased how it worked out, but then, the Hotel Grotta has very high standards for everything. I rented one car through an agency on Santorini (Spiridakos) and was extremely disappointed with the service. My other rental cars were multi-day rentals arranged in advance through gemut.com

I'm going to post a link to this thread on your other one -- no worries about the douple posting; it just helps if they are linked.
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Old Jun 24th, 2017, 05:50 PM
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Cabs can be scarce on Paros. And most of them will not fit a family of five. We usually rent a car through European Car Rentals in Parikia. They will drop off and pick up the car at your hotel. So easy! But if you haven't already reserved it, you may find it impossible to get for July/August.
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Old Jun 24th, 2017, 06:44 PM
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If you are starting a day trip outside of athens (Delphi? what?) and do not fancy coping with Athens traffic ... one agency, Swift/Avanti has the service that they will drive your rental car exactly to the on-ramp for the intercity hiway out of town. (They send a 2nd car along & It picks up the 1st car driver -- this would handle the 5 passenger situation, because 1 of your party can go in the 2nd car to the on-ramp). You would have to inquire whether they offer airport drop-off.
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Old Jun 25th, 2017, 06:25 AM
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kja, I just read about your experience on Santorini in another post-- OMG! We also routinely decline the cdw insurance as our credit card and car insurance at home provide coverage. We will for sure avoid spiridakos. Did you encounter problems with paying for the rental car with a credit card elsewhere? insurance issues elsewhere?

Weadles, I just did a quick check on expedia for paros and there are still a ton of cars for our time there in July-- whew! Got scared for a second.

travelerjan, in Athens we will have just four-- my third son is only joining us for the island part of the trip. My husband loves to drive so I am guessing he will be fine in driving through Athens (although I will be bracing for impact the whole time!!) but interesting how accommodating the rental car agencies are that they would meet you on a highway!
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Old Jun 25th, 2017, 08:19 AM
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Yes, my experience with Spiradakos was awful.

I had no problem with the one-day rental I arranged through the Hotel Grotta; they worked with a local company called Fun Car.

I had gemut.com make advance arrangements for two other rentals. Both were with Hertz and I had paid for both in advance (excepting the drop-off fee for one-way rentals, which I paid upon picking the car up). One involved a pick-up in Chania, where the hold on my credit card was ridiculously high as an inducement to take their insurance, but without any real pressure to do so. The return on that car was to Heraklion, and I ended up with a bit of a problem there because the office was on a street that had JUST been changed to pedestrian-only, so it was very hard to find, and then hard to find a parking space so that I could walk to the office. But once I did, the return was very easy. The other rental involved a pick-up at the airport in Athens and return to the airport in Thessaloniki, and that rental was extremely easy at both ends.
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Old Jun 25th, 2017, 08:29 AM
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jeanned -- re rental car Swift/Avanti - they don't meet you on a highway, they deliver the car to y our hotel and DRIVE you to the intercity highway ... their website doesn't talk about doing the reverse, but I'm sure it can be arranged. So far, this is the only agency I've heard of that offers this service (other experts chime in), and they must find it gives them an advantage among the many competitors for rental business.
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Old Jun 26th, 2017, 12:57 AM
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Having worked many years in tourism in Greece, i had to investigate what travelerjan said about picking up customers at their hotel and driving them to the highway intersection , so that they won't get lost, as that was hard to believe.

I phoned Avanti and talked to the reservations clerk who explicitly said they don't offer this kind of service. Customers can rent from Avanti a GPS if they would like to find their way out of Athens, to use his own words.

It is also not mentioned anywhere on their ( cheap looking ) website.
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Old Jun 26th, 2017, 04:41 AM
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We rented a car from Pareus and just getting out of the city was a scary experience with all the scooters passing by and changing lanes. That being said, driving elsewhere was perfectly fine. Our greatest problem at the time was finding the road out of town. With gps, it should be much easier. If you do use a road map, I suggest getting one with Greek names as there were several times when we were challenged trying to make out the Greek alphabet. Driving through the Peloponnesus was fabulous. We hired taxis in santorini and felt that was fine, but rented a car in Paros. You will have a wonderful time. Greece is delightful.
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Old Jun 26th, 2017, 05:52 AM
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For years I have heard Swift picks you up at your hotel then drives you to the outskirts of Athens. I think I originally read it on Matt Barrets guide. I just checked and Matt is still telling people that.

Here is a quote from this web site under search "Swift car rental."
www.greektravel.com/swift/

Text from that web site. If he was going to deliver the cars to the hotel and the airport or wherever the clients wanted. So he joined forces with Avanti. Then he wondered to himself "What can I do to make renting a car an easier experience for a tourist who may be intimidated by Athen's wild traffic?" He came up with an idea. He would drive the clients to the outskirts of the city where driving is less challenging and let them take it from there.

Something isn't adding up here. How can Swift be putting this service on the web but Avanti doesn't know about it.
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Old Jun 26th, 2017, 06:24 AM
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Wow my apologies ... was too trusting of the Matt Barrett website -- I did suggest it to someone who did use that service, but it was years & years ago. So as the people in New Jersey are known to say, "Fuggedaboudit!!
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Old Jun 26th, 2017, 09:29 AM
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stanbr

I am not sure Swift really exists in Greece...
The number on the website that you posted belongs to Avanti.. ( i just called that number) and their address is not in the center ( Syngrou Avenue) but in a suburb of Athens, pretty far away from the center.
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Old Jun 27th, 2017, 09:28 AM
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Looking closer at Swift's website, it is obvious that it hasn't been updated at least since 2010, when VAT in Greece got increased from 19% to 21%...

The cars that are shown as examples for different categories are old and not being produced anymore and of course no car rental has them in their fleet in 2017....
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Old Jun 27th, 2017, 01:23 PM
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Clausar Its good to have people with feet on the ground who are closer to the action. Thanks for looking into this for us. Janet and I will not be using this outdated information again.

Matt Baretts web site had a whole section called whats new in 2017 giving the impression it was up to date. Clearly thats not the case.
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Old Jun 29th, 2017, 05:13 PM
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BTW, I noted above that the Hertz office in Chania put a ridiculously high hold on my credit card as an inducement to take their insurance, but without any real pressure to do so. I'm just now going through my papers, and had forgotten just how high that hold was -- it was for 3,000 euro!!! Yes, 3K! When I said, OK, and handed him the card, there was no further discussion. I'm glad I have good credit!
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Old Jun 29th, 2017, 11:22 PM
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kja

This is a high amount indeed !!! I see it mentioned in their terms & conditions however, they charge it for a specific category of cars.
You can read about it under Payment method here : https://www.hertz.gr/Content.aspx?C=223
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Old Jun 30th, 2017, 07:20 PM
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@ clausar: Very interesting! My car was a class C, so clearly they did not NEED to put that high a hold on my CC. As I said, it was my clear impression that the amount was set at a high level specifically to encourage me to purchase Hertz CDW coverage, which I was not about to do. At least I was not pressured to purchase CDW beyond a "Really? Its only x / day" and then a rather casual statement of the sort, "If you decline CDW, we'll have to put a very high hold on your CC, a hold of 3,000 euros." Thank goodness I've been well-schooled on this matter and was willing to stick to my refusal!
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Old Jul 1st, 2017, 07:46 AM
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If you are not a citizen of one of the EU countries be sure to bring an International Driving Permit with you to Greece.
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Old Jul 1st, 2017, 09:21 AM
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I rented one in Chania, through the little hotel -- ore more like B&B -- that I stayed at.

Guy delivered the car and I gave him a lift back a few blocks to his office, though I don't think it was any big agency.

He also had some kind of arrangement which allowed me to drop off the car very early in the morning at the airport.

I think I paid 100 Euros for like 2 days.

Not the best deal but when I searched web sites for rental there, it was just a couple of weeks before I was set to arrive. There were little or no availability and what there was available was more expensive. This was in mid July so peak time.
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