When car rentals vary depending on residency

On looking to book a rental car from Rodez airport in France a reader called Daniel went to the europcar.ie website and put in the dates he wanted.

“At the end, before you submit your requirements, the form asks for your country of residence. Then I noticed that the price varied by a considerable amount depending on what country you said you were resident in.”

He says that the price for three days in September for a Polo-size car for an Irish resident was €111.20, but “if you say you are resident in Sweden the price is €92 for exactly the same dates and if you said you were resident in France it would cost you €204.99; Germany was €119 and the UK was €103.”

He points out that Europcar is not the only site to do this. He booked the car saying he was a resident of Sweden. “They have no proof if I live in Sweden or not, I just thought it was a bit crazy to have different prices for people from different countries and it might help some other people to save a little money.”

This is interesting e-mail which raises a number of questions. We contacted Daniel and expressed concern that he would simply say he is a resident of Sweden and get the car at the cheaper rate. We wondered if, when he goes to pick up the car, he could be asked to produce a driving licence of his country of residence, which he will not be able to do. We also suggested that if anything were to happen to the car or to him while driving it, the fact that he wasn’t truthful on the form could invalidate his insurance policy.

Turns out he works for a car hire company in Ireland and he said they do no such checks, even if there is an accident.

“I can live in another country and still have my Irish driving licence as long as I haven’t been living there for over a year. I’ve booked the hire car saying I am currently resident in Sweden. They have no way of proving I’m not, or was not at the time of making the booking,” he said. He promised to fill us in when he gets back.

We also contacted a number of industry sources to try to find out why the prices differ depending on which country you say you reside in. There are a number of interesting theories.

One expert suggested that there is a degree of price profiling of individual countries by all the major car hire companies. Americans can afford to pay more so are charged more. People from India would not be able to pay quite so much so would be billed accordingly.

Another theory suggests that the companies carry out actuarial studies to work out the driver profiles and accident risks in individual countries and in this case have deemed Swedes better drivers than Irish ones.

Cables are cheap as chips, but not here

A reader by the name of Barry contacted us about something he has noticed lately which he finds “disgraceful”.

He was in the market for cables for a cheap blu-ray player he bought online. No such items came with the order so he went shopping around. “Beforehand I had a look online to see what I would need and get an idea of what I should spend. A typical HDMI lead would cost £2 (€2.39) in the UK from either shops on the high street or online dealers,” he writes, but the best price he could find in an Irish shop was €15.

“That was going to a good selection of electronics dealers too, including DID, Maplin, Harvey Norman, you name it! This is not just on leads either. Nothing I saw in these shops was even close to price it should be and can be bought for,” he fumes. He says he is pretty shocked by these blatant rip-off merchants.

“Many people wouldn’t know better then to pay this price when buying a TV or home entertainment product. But what can be done?”