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A daily rate on its own does not tell you what a hire costs. Three numbers do, and the other two are the ones that turn a cheap-looking quote into an expensive week.
1. The daily rate
What the vehicle costs for a day. It should come down for a longer hire — a week priced at seven times a day is not a weekly rate, it is a daily rate repeated. Ask for the weekly and monthly figures even if you are only thinking about a weekend, because a business that has them has thought about this properly.
2. The kilometre allowance
How far you can drive each day before extra charges start. This is where quotes differ most and where people get caught. A generous daily rate with a small allowance is often worse than the reverse, and which is better depends entirely on your trip.
Some real distances from Nagercoil, one way: Kanyakumari is 20 km, Suchindram 7, Thuckalay 18, Marthandam 30, Colachel 30, Thiruvananthapuram about 65. A day pottering around town might be 40 km. A day that takes in the palace, the falls and the point can be 150. Against a 150 km allowance those are very different days.
3. The extra-kilometre rate
What each kilometre past the allowance costs. It is usually a single-figure rupee amount, which sounds like nothing until you are sixty kilometres over on each of five days. Work it out against your actual plan rather than against the rate, and if you know you will go over, say so at the start — it is normally cheaper to agree a bigger allowance up front than to pay the overage.
What a deposit actually covers
A refundable security deposit is not a fee and it is not a part-payment. It is held while you have the vehicle, and it comes back when the vehicle does, minus anything genuinely owing: kilometres past the allowance, fuel if you return it lower than you took it, and damage. Nothing else should come out of it.
Questions worth asking anyone, including us
- What is the daily allowance, and what does a kilometre past it cost?
- What is the deposit, and when exactly does it come back?
- Is the fuel level recorded at handover, in writing?
- What happens if I keep the vehicle a day longer than planned?
- Who pays if it breaks down?
A rental that answers all five without hesitating is one you can plan around. One that answers in round numbers and changes the subject is one to keep looking past.
More from the blog
- What documents you need to rent a self-drive car in Tamil NaduA driving licence, one photo ID and a refundable deposit is the short answer. The longer answer covers international permits, what a learner's licence will not do, and what actually gets checked when the car arrives.
- A one-day Kanyakumari drive, with honest timingsMost one-day Kanyakumari itineraries are written by people who have not driven them. This one has the distances, the closing times and the bit where the ferry queue eats an hour.
- Self drive or with a driver? An honest comparisonWe hire vehicles both ways, so we have no stake in the answer. Here is when each one is genuinely the better choice, including the days when self drive is a false economy.
- Driving in Kanyakumari district: roads, monsoon and what to expectThe highways are good, the town centres are slow, and the inland roads have more going on than the map suggests. What to expect, season by season.