Following the major disruption to European travel in the last number of weeks, thousands of people have been forced to cancel their travel plans, including their car hire.

Certain companies offer cancellation protection to their customers when they hire a car. The rate of this protection is based upon the length of the period of car hire and is typically between £2 and £10. This protection waivers the normal cancellation policy and provides the customer with a full refund in the event of a cancellation.

This sounds like a pretty good deal until you examine the cancellation policies of many car hire companies. The particular company that offer the cancellation protection mentioned above allow a period of 48 hours after booking your car hire where you can cancel for free. After this period, there is a charge of £15 for cancellation. If you cancel within 48 hours of the actual rental date, you are charged 50% of the rental price.

At ECB Online, we do not charge a fee for cancellation or amendment as long as this is done 48 hours in advance of the rental date. Absoloutely no charge whatsoever if you cancel within 48 hours of the pickup date. If you wish to cancel your hire within 48 hours of the rental date, a fee equal to the first 3 days of the hire applies.

We strongly advise you to check a company’s cancellation policy before putting your booking through. This could save you from being subject to costly cancellation fees. Hopefully, the volcanic ash cloud was a once in a lifetime event. But putting a booking through ECB Online guarantees no hefty fees or catches if your forced to cancel or amend your booking, ensuring your peace of mind.

Check our our great deals now!

The eruption of Mount Eyjafjallajökull on the 21st of March has caused chaos to the aviation industry across Europe. This unprecedented event has left an estimated 5 million people stranded or unable to fly. But why has this particular eruption prevented planes from flying?

Apart from the obvious visibility problems, volcanic ash can cause airplane engines to cease functioning completely. The ash is composed of very fine particles which can damage airplane engines and even suffocate them completely, causing them to fail.

The International Air Transport Association estimates that airlines will lose about €150,000,000 each day during the disruption.

With few planes travelling throughout Europe, there is a heavy demand for ferry services and for car hire. Here at ECB Online we are receiving an unprecedented amount of calls and emails and we are doing are very best to get through them all. Please note that after business hours (08:30 – 17:00) please email us at sales@ecbonline.com or just press the Contact button on our website and send us through your query. We endeavor to answer emails on the same day that they are received.

We also ask visitors to note that currently international one way bookings are unavailable. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes and the international one way service will be up and running again as soon as possible.

We do however have pickup and drop off points available at a number of city, port and railway locations across Europe. Many have already availed of this service to find alternative transport home.

Visit ECB Online now to check out our fantastic car hire deals.

A number of surveys have recently concluded that car hire prices are most definetely on the up. Price comparisons between popular car hire locations this year and last year for the same period, show that prices are almost two-thirds more expensive than they were last year.

Many car hire companies have had to reduce their fleets as the recession has hit and this means that in some destinations, there simply aren’t enough cars.

Many suppliers are already bracing themselves for severe shortages during the summer months. Ireland is one of the regions particularly affected by the shortages with demand expected to far outstrip supply in the coming months.

One way to minimize cost is to simply book your car hire as early as possible. The longer you leave it, the more expensive it gets. Last minute bookings will be especially expensive and travellers may find that in some regions, leaving it to the last minute means there are no cars available.

At Ecb Online, we can confidently claim to offer some of the most competitive rates on the market. We compare prices from all of the major car hire companies and return the cheapest results so that YOU get the best deal available.

Whether your hiring a car in Europe or Australia our prices are not to be missed especially in these difficult economic times.

Check out our prices at ECB Online now!