A question, about car rentals in London

by MilesFromBlighty 6 Comments

28-07-2014 12-03-42

A reader emailed me this morning and asked this question:

In the US, it is best to avoid renting cars at airport locations, because of the extra airport taxes and fees.
Is this true in England also.
Is it cheaper to rent cars in London rather than at Heathrow?
Where would one rent a car in London, and be able to avoid the congestion charge?

As some of you may know I cannot drive, having never passed my test (stop laughing). I wanted to have a look though and so did a quick sample on Hertz rentals for a short period next month.

Interestingly the rental from Heathrow was substantially cheaper than the rental from Hertz’s Central London location.

HEATHROW

28-07-2014 11-57-13

CENTRAL LONDON

28-07-2014 11-59-17

I’ll have a look at other companies later in the week

Comments

  1. Why would anyone want to rent/drive a car in central London, especially if they’re coming from a LHD country, as there are so many public transport options and zero cheap parking.

    Just rent from the airport, if you want to save a little more money then use a company such as Enterprise.

  3. I regularly rent from LHR Hertz, quite reasonable for London/England. To avoid congestion charge only drive into town in the early morning or evenings or on weekends. Rent outside of a radius of about 5-6 miles from Central London, you can find online maps showing the congestion area pretty easily

  4. I just rented a car in central London in July from Alamo. We visited London for 3 days and needed a car for the rest of our trip through England so it didn’t make sense to 3 of us travel to Heathrow just to pick up a car. We just picked up the car by Marble Arch and drove out of London toward the nearest motorway (much easier than trying to drive into London!) We did have to pay the London City Fee of about 11 pounds. If I remember correctly, the rates from LHR and from central London were pretty much the same.

  5. Andy

    Don’t be so judgmental. Just because you might be happy going back out to Heathrow after a week in London to rent a car doesn’t mean others would.

Comments are closed.