Hi Steve8482, appreciate your advice, I have already emailed Economy Car Hire, and will see what their response is - I truly hope they are as shocked and concerned as I am at AirAutos attitude.

Forgive my ignorance, but who are GNR in Faro, I assume the transport police?

I would certanly be happy to send them copies of the photos, if only to shoot a warning off to all car hire companies that safety standards cannot ever be compromised, it's all very well ensuring there's a yellow vest in the car and a warning triangle, because for sure you'll need them when you have a defective tyre blow out on the motorway!

GNR is sort of the Portuguese equivalant of the French gendarmerie. The Police (blue and white cars) stick to the towns (again like in France) and the GNR do the rest, including highway patrol (Brigada de Trânsito), in the green and white cars. So when a tyre blows on the N125 and someone has to identify the bodies and piece together the mess of their belongings it will be a GNR officer - which gives them a vested interest in it not happening!

They have a quite badly written site at http://www.gnr.pt

Steve I wouldnt think they would even reply or act on it,theyre always too busy with the on the spot fine senario. The best way would be to go in person with the evidence and insist they do something about it. Off Topic I know but I have been waiting 2 weeks for a reply to an email to my local camara & ARH faro (Water Authority) for information on the mandatory registering of boreholes & fosse at our property, a couldn't care less attitude, but its ok that they will fine you 25,000 euros if you dont register before the deadline date, so a trip to their Faro office is on the agenda for next week to get some answers when we could be doing something better with our time instead of being in a long queue and maybe a 4 hour wait.

Guys, this is my first post so take it easy on me!! I have been reading the thread with great interest as we're visiting the Algarve again in July/August this year. I normally pay through the nose and hire the car through Hertz as I "thought" that saftey standards would be better with the larger brand. Do you think that the firms in Economy Car Hire are a bit of a mixed bag or, in general, can they be trusted? The point regarding checking the car is also interesting. The one thing I would say is that having dragged 3 young children through 2 airports and into the hot sun, I may not have checked as thoroughly as I should have in the past!

Welcome to the forums bonzai.

We always hire our car from economycarhire and never had any complaints. We haven't used the 'new' company in their list that's mentioned in the thread further back but have used Travel Rent and 4 fun.

We've never had a bad car - they've always been very clean and new. Never had a problem on return with petrol either.

Hi Bonzai, I have always hired via Economy Car Hire and have always had cars from TravelRent, and have never had a problem with their cars or service at all. Having said that, my brother previously rented a car from TravelRent and by his own admission he didn't check the tyres and during a motorway stop discovered a bulge in one of the tyres - so he was lucky - that said he flew to Faro today and has again hired via TravelRent as he believes it was a "one off" so to speak and is aware that I've never had any problems with them.

I only hired an AirAuto car on my last visit due to the vast difference in prices between TravelRent and AirAuto, and unfortunately had the problems you probably read about earlier. I probably now wouldn't touch an AirAuto car with a barge pole, but I'm certain there are many people who've never had a problem with them.

On my next visit at the end of June I will probably book with Drive4Fun, to give them a try, as they are now including breakdown and recovery of cars in Spain, and as I spend the majority of my time in Spain, that's more beneficial to me.

As long as the car is not falling apart and all seat belts and lights work and the tyres have tread and no lumps missing out of them, I personally don't care if the car has the odd scratch or possible dent, but I think we all are tempted just to check out the bodywork, due to the fact that you have a rep wandering around the car with a clip board making notes on any marks on the bodywork, but they never make a point of checking the tyres or the spare, in front of you. (On my last car hire experience, when I went to check the spare tyre in the boot of the 3rd car, the rep said to me "don't worry it is there!" - I never thought it wouldn't be but wanted to check it was in good condition).

Sorry I appear to have rambled on - but the tyre problems I've recently experienced are quite fresh and it causes you to think - What if I hadn't checked those tyres???

Can anyone recommend a company to rent an Automatic family sized car from? We will be arriving into Faro on the 13th of June?

Funstuie, via Economy Car Hire you can select whether you are shown manual or automatic cars for rental.

Has anyone used Rentauto throught Economy car Hire? Also, does anyone know where I can rent a Citroen Grand Picasso? None of the companies I've looked at seem to offer them.

Quick question and here seemed the best place. Do you think 4 adults and a child (in a car seat) will fit in a 5 door Punto?

It's the only option in our price range, the next size up (Megane Estate) is double the price.

It will depend on how much luggage you have. the people will fit at a squeeze(!), cases will be another matter though.............

We will have 2 family sized cases and a small buggy. My dad used to drive a punto and I remember all of us fitting in (4 boys and my parents) but it was a squeeze. I don't remember the boot size though

Dont forget, the car seat will be fairly bulky...........to be honest, I think you might struggle...........

And you'll struggle even more if it's a 3 door version! What your fathers boot size was like isn't really relevant, the Punto was completely changed about a year ago. Don't use suit cases, get soft holdalls and they might go in with a bit of shoving and squashing.

But I can't believe you can't find anything between a Punto and a Megane Estate - how many companies have you checked?

Just a quick update on the AirAuto/Economy Car Hire problem I had on my last car hire in Faro. Economy Car Hire agree "the tyre problem is not acceptable and we do rely heavily on customers feedback", however by all accounts AirAuto took some persuasion to agree bald and damaged tyres are not acceptable.

So AirAuto have offered me a free upgrade on my next booking with them and Economy Car Hire have offered me a 5% discount, on my next booking, which amounts to £5.85 as my last quotation from them for a June booking was £117.

Still waiting for a written apology or something in writing that at least shows Economy Car Hire and AirAuto are taking this matter seriously and are concerned that they have a client who was offered two severly unroadworthy cars - I believe it's called CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Scoya, just back from Portugal, first thing I checked on the car were the tyres, all in good order, so Travel Rent proved good once again. Re a free upgrade,what are they going to upgrade you to? a mercedes lol. Would be nice to have a written apology though, to show that it has hit home on the safety aspect of their customers.

Must say I'm relieved our car in July has been through Travel Rent - but will definitely mention to hubby to check tyres. So far we've had lovely cars.

nearly always use economy,( partner travelrent) never had a problem with tyres , can anyone say how the new procedure for pick up is working via the white shed in car park no 4, when I WAS LAST THERE THE QUEUES WERE QUITE LONG

Has anyone used Travelrent before? I found this website http://www.travelrent.pt/ but there is no way to book on it.

How have you booked through them?