A travel website review
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Auto Europe is yet another website where you can book flights, cars and hotels. You’d think that, by now, this market would be completely cornered, but some clearly think otherwise. Still, it surprises me these guys are willing to try their luck at offering these travel related products. All these websites tap into the same systems, meaning that air tickets, hotel rooms and car rental prices never differ much from site to site.
A quick check, Boston to London round trip from 1 to 22 august, resulted in only one fare on Auto Europe, at 821.25 dollar, before tax. Expedia had multiple fares for less than 800 dollars, after tax. The obvious moral: Don’t use this website for airtickets.
Also, the website is very America focused. As a European, I can’t appreciate that.
But it’s not all bad; I really like the logo, the double a, or e. But I do think I’ve seen that before.
There’s an option to buy a Peugeot through a guaranteed buy back program, which, they say, is interesting if you were planning on renting a car for more than 17 days. You can get a quote online, but I couldn’t see any real difference between this and just renting a car. And, ‘buying’ it from 1 to 22 august, picking it up and dropping it off in Brussels still comes down to around 45 dollars per day for the smallest car available. I don’t think that’s a good deal at all.
One option which has potential is the possibility to rent scooters in selected Italian and French cities. However, although the site is able to tell you that driving more than 200km per day will set you back 0.25 per kilometer (expensive!), they can’t tell you how much the rent actually will be. I requested a quote and got a reply within 30 minutes. For a rented scooter from 1 to 22 August, in Rome, I was expected to pay over 2300 dollars. This *must* be a joke. Also, although I gave my first name as Babak and my last name as Fakhamzadeh, Jennifer wrote me back with an email beginning with “Dear Mr. Babek”…