Many of our customers need a DVLA check when they don’t have their counterpart licence, this is to check that they do not have any convictions on their licence or more than 9 points. This is standard and every car rental company needs to be 100% you don’t have any convictions or too many points as it will void their insurance, usually we would just get a DVLA check done and that would be the end of it with the person hiring the car having to pay for the admin fee which is around £10, what happens however if it’s outside the hours in which the DVLA operate? (more…)

It can be confusing in terms of what documents you need when hiring a car but all will be explained to you before you pick the car up. We get many people however that are unable to hire because they don’t have the various required documents so we felt it important to make it 100% clear to our customers what documents you need when hiring a car at Heathrow Airport with it being the biggest airport within the UK.

The required documents differ for various things such as customers that live in the UK have to have different documents to those who are flying into the country. (more…)

The busiest airport in the UK that in mind there is a direct correlation with car hire. We get several questions about our services at Heathrow, one of which is if we only offer self-drive car hire or if we also have chauffeur driven car hire and unfortunately at the moment for Heathrow we only allow self-drive car hire.

What’s The Difference?
There is a distinct difference between chauffeur driven cars and self-driven cars. Although for some it may seem obvious but at times it can get confusing so we will simplify what we mean by each of the terms.

Self-Drive Cars
Hired cars that are self-drive which is what we supply here at Indigo Car Hire basically means that you pay for the full cost of the rental period of the car and drive it yourself (or your free additional driver that you can add to the rental). Apart from if you add an additional driver it will only be yourself able to drive the car due to insurance purposes, that is why there is so many restrictions to do with age and experience as well as convictions or points so that you can be insured over the period of your rental.

Chauffeur Car Hire
This means that you hire a car and pay for it yourself fully however you also employ someone to drive the car for you.
Definition: A chauffeur is a person employed to drive a passenger motor vehicle, especially a luxury vehicle such as a large sedan or limousine.
Which at this moment we don’t supply.

If you are interested in hiring a self drive vehicle then please contact us on +44 (0)113 880 0748 or email us at sales@thealternativeagency.co.uk and we will help organise this for you completely hassle free and cost effective.

When hiring a car the excess can be an issue for well, everyone. The excess on a hired vehicle can range anywhere from a couple of hundred pounds to a couple of thousand pounds, basically what this means that if you are driving in the rental car and have an accident then this is the maximum figure you will have to pay out and sometimes it can be a very significant figure, in fact most the time. Most people simply don’t have £2000+ lying around in their bank account in the event of an accident so people choose to reduce their excess to zero which at Indigo Car Hire we can offer. (more…)

Credit score can catch even the best of us up, it’s easy to get into bother with mounting debts and bills to pay as you may have seen by the increase in credit score loan advertisements. Everything is just that little bit harder when you have bad credit, even hiring a car. Here at Indigo we pride ourselves in being able to offer services that other car hire companies, can’t or just don’t. One of our main aims has been to provide people with a low credit score with a car, whether that be for hire or leasing. (more…)

The road atlas, a thing of the past. The development in technology in recent years has seen people all the way from the struggle of spending hours gazing at a paper map taking wrong turns all time to having a computerized voice telling you exactly where to go every step of the way. A digitally planned out route from A to B, and you can pick any location in the world to go to and from as you please, no restrictions. (more…)

You pack your bags, set off for holiday, get on the plane and soon realise, oh no I have forgot my driver’s licence! Whether this is the case or it’s just a factor of you have lost your licence this can be a real problem when it comes to hiring a car as obviously rental companies require that you have a drivers licence to produce to them when you pick up the rental, just so they know that you are eligible to drive. (more…)

When you are travelling to Spain many people opt to hire a car, and in most Spanish locations there is one car hire company that is significantly cheaper than the rest, it also happens to be the supplier that we have to book through in order to get you debit card car hire. This is all well and good, a cheap supplier that accepts debit cards! When you look deeper into it however there is one major issue which we always make you aware of before you book. (more…)