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Easy car hire to beat the Stolen Car Blues

I never thought easy car hire would be something I would have to worry about. My experience with car rental went as far as the airport car rentals I would organise for friends and family visiting our lovely country from overseas. And since it never came out of my own pocket I infrequently looked at prices when I booked them cars to get around in – Europeans have that lovely pound/rand exchange rate going for them. Suffice it to say, I was in for a surprise.

I once had a lovely little car. Nothing fancy, just a champagne-coloured 1400 VW Golf. No power steering, no air-conditioning, just the basics. The only thing that set him apart from the legions of other Golf’s littering the streets of Cape Town was the fact that he was mine and that I was covering the monthly payments with my own money earned with my very own blood, sweat and tears. We had a good run, Aragorn and I. We had beautiful trips up the Garden Route, to my grandparents in Bredasdorp and my parents in Riebeek Kasteel. Not once did I encounter a flat tire, an disinclined battery or a reluctant starter motor. Smooth sailing, really.

Imagine my utter shock and horror when I walked out of my cousin’s beautifully appointed flatlet in Upper Woodstock to find that Aragorn had been nicked. Gone – a’ la poof. Along with my gym bag containing my trusty running shoes, my favourite pair of ski pants and the one shirt I own that can withstand sweaty Yoga sessions without disclosing any lumps and bumps. The experience was quite perplexing to say the very least.

I proceeded to ring up the Woodstock Police Department to get a case number. Living in South Africa I didn’t really anticipate them finding Aragorn; he was probably being hacked to bits or spray-painted a different colour at the time in any case. I merely needed the case number so I could start the very exhausting and needlessly abstruse process of having the insurance company provide the very service I pay them for – providing the money to buy a new car. Four nerve-wrecking hours later the police showed up, took my statement and promptly left, leaving me without any means of getting to work. Woodstock is not really a neighbourhood you want to go walking around in and taking a taxi is equally risky. The only option left to me was to locate a quick, efficient and easy car hire company to get my out of my annoying predicament.

Luckily for me, Cape Town is quite well supplied with these. A swift flick through the telephone book and I had the numbers of three car rental companies on hand. The first one I called turned out to be a lemon – they required a mountain of paperwork and a time consuming credit check before I would be allowed to rent a vehicle. I will never know what the third company would’ve had to offer because by the second try, I had what I needed. The lady that took my call was professional, sympathetic and offered to send someone round to take me to work while she sorted out the paperwork. I gratefully accepted and by the time I finished work that afternoon there was a courier waiting outside my building with a snazzy little number for me to get around in.

I know that it’s not a good idea to live your life always expecting the worst to happen, but on the other hand it always pays to be prepared. After this experience I changed my insurance policy to include car replacement rental coverage. My premium went up nominally, but the money I will spend on this in a year is less than it would cost to rent a car from even the cheapest vehicle rental agency. All I know is that my experience of becoming part of South African crime statistics would have been much more distressful hadn’t I stumble upon the easy car hire company I did.

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Tanya has been considering airport car rental and came across some interesting and easy car hire websites.

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