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I will be travelling to Scotland in the end of October and I'm looking into renting a car for 10 days to visit the beautiful Scotland landscape. I have already done some research and selected a small car (I'm a student on limited budget) when I found out that by UK standards you are considered a young driver if you're under 25 years (I'm 23). When I came to the payment step of my reservation I almost had an heart attack. The young driver surcharge was more than the rental of the car with full insurance protection. (The car is somewhere about 300€ all together and the surcharge is 300+€). This is just nonsense to me. Is there any way that I can avoid this surcharge or minimise it? Are there any car dealers than don't charge you this fee?

ADDITIONAL INFO:

I have my licence for 5 years and I have driven over 70000km in that time. No insurance claims up to this date.

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  • How long have you had your licence? – Berwyn Jul 25 '16 at 7:46
  • Try a small company. – JonathanReez♦ Jul 25 '16 at 7:46
  • I have added this to my question @Berwyn – Denis Vitez Jul 25 '16 at 7:50
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    I found a link to a company that reportedly didn't charge over 23s, but seems they do charge £10/day arnoldclarkrental.com/terms-of-hire – Berwyn Jul 25 '16 at 7:56
  • Try a car rental comparison site, e.g. 121carhire.com However, cheapest young driver surcharge seems to be £10/day still. Would be good to find one that includes the charge in the comparison, but didn't have any luck with that – Berwyn Jul 25 '16 at 8:32
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Statistics show that the highest risk age group is the under 25's, and insurers work directly from statistics. The hire cost will be factored directly from type of car and insurance costs. All the majors and most of the small ones will do this - it's simple and easy for them.

If you hunt around, you should be able to find a small insurer who will take into account 5 years with no claims, but it may take some effort.

Arnold Clark have a number of clauses you should read carefully (have used them once - never again) - things can get very expensive if you do have any incident!

Additionally, car rental prices across Europe have risen dramatically over the last 18 months - not sure why, but I was looking at over 55% rises in most of the countries I wanted to hire a car in. Some time spent on the Internet helped me drop that back down again, but it was a struggle (in Cyprus it was Sixt that could do a good deal.)

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  • I do get that. We also have to pay extra insurance in Slovenia for the first 3 years of our licence. What bothers me is the amount of the insurance which seems like a total ripoff to me. A young driver would have to pay over 11000 pounds each year on top of it's normal insurance if the same rates would apply. And I would understand if the rates would be in correlation with engine size or something but it seems like it's the same price for my 1.2 litre engine as it's for any other. – Denis Vitez Jul 25 '16 at 8:12

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