Car rental: Yes? No? Best deals?

[TomZ]

Yup, another Coz car rental thread.

I had booked a rental through Expedia for my upcoming trip (20-29 Feb), but balked at the exorbitant price of the supplemental insurance and canceled the reservation. So, my questions:

Is renting a car recommended? Were staying in town at Casa Mexicana, a non-AI.

If renting is a good idea, from whom, how much, and is the supplemental insurance necessary?

Are daily rentals, say for an island tour a good idea?

I'm not looking for a luxury car, just basic transportation. A/C is even optional.

[carobinsoniv]

Is renting a car recommended? Were staying in town at Casa Mexicana, a non-AI.

If renting is a good idea, from whom, how much, and is the supplemental insurance necessary?

Are daily rentals, say for an island tour a good idea?

If you are in the middle of town which it appears you are, you do not need a car for restaurants and such. You will have a lot to choose from within a few blocks. Walking will be much easier than driving.

If you rent, insurance is a very good idea. Personally, I would not rent without it - check some horror stories on this forum.

I am not sure about daily rentals but you may be able to negotiate with a cab driver for an island tour. It may be easier than going thru the rental/return process. Someone else may give you better information.

Have a great trip.

[njones259]

Check out ISIS on 5th avenue,Margarita will rent you a hardtop VW for $30 dollars a day full coverage,or ragtop for $35.Have been renting there for years.

[blue steal]

Hey TomZ. I would not rent a car if staying at Casa Mexicana. It is in town and you can walk to most restaurants from there or use a taxi for any trips further out to Mega or Chedrui. (Think Walmart & Target). Just use the shuttle vans at the airport to get to your hotel, probably about $7/person. If you want to tour the island or spend a day on the windward side you could either hire a taxi to take you or others have used Isis rentadora, I have as well. She is honest and fair, has mostly VW's and they are about $30/day including insurance. A bonus is that she is located a short walk from Casa Mexicana just down from the plaza next to a great bakery called Zermats.
Have fun.

[Mike]

Yup, another Coz car rental thread.

I had booked a rental through Expedia for my upcoming trip (20-29 Feb), but balked at the exorbitant price of the supplemental insurance and canceled the reservation. So, my questions:

Is renting a car recommended? Were staying in town at Casa Mexicana, a non-AI.

If renting is a good idea, from whom, how much, and is the supplemental insurance necessary?

Are daily rentals, say for an island tour a good idea?

I'm not looking for a luxury car, just basic transportation. A/C is even optional.

So many variables to your questions Tom. Everybody has a different comfort level to exposure. Some people roll the dice and skip the insurance, some people falsely believe their credit cards will cover them, some people take every ounce of insurance they can get. The thing is no supplemental insurance is 'necessary' until you wish you had it. Even with buying every insurance available you're still exposing yourself to financial risk and jail time driving in Mexico if the perfect storm of bad circumstances occurs.

One option is to rent from your first day to your last, another cheaper one would be to only rent a few days at a time or just a day here and a day there. I've done it all three ways, but I usually always have a rental car for every trip I take there, even if the car sits 95% of the time, I like the freedom of being able to hop in and go anywhere whenever I feel like it, however I'm the exception and from my experience the vast majority of divers going to Cozumel do not rent a car while there.

[cvchief]

but I usually always have a rental car for every trip I take there, even if the car sits 95% of the time, I like the freedom of being able to hop in and go anywhere whenever I feel like it, however I'm the exception and from my experience the vast majority of divers going to Cozumel do not rent a car while there.

Fin, that is me exactly. From my first trip and stay at the Grand, we always have had a car. If I wanna go, we go. We stay in town all the time now and walk to lots of stuff, but we still get the car.

[yaml]

have rented from isis rentadora and payless; both are good ; payless is cheaper (located at hoel barracuda); imo - jeep is the only way to go; but is more $$; have fun; also plenty of places to park in town for .75 to 1.00 /day

[Ron Lee]

One option. Rent for three-four days. See how it works for you. If you like it, extend the rental period. If you decide it is not for you...minimal impact.

If you drive down to a southern beach club every day....you effectively break even with using a taxi. Drive more than that and you are ahead.

[Lwang]

You could go sit through one of those timeshare presentation and get yourself a rental. That's what I did when I came back from a cenote trip and part of the package is they gave us $20 for a cab to go back to our resort at the south of the island. We thought instead, we would rent a car for 1 day, use it to get back to our hotel and to the airport the next day, plus wherever we can drive for the remainder of the day. We passed by this booth right in the square and they were asking us if we wanted to rent a car and we figured, how convenient, just what we wanted. Turned out they were trying to sell us timeshare, we said we don't have time to sit thru the BS, but the lady said they only needed 30-45min of our time the next day right before we head off to the airport. So we got the car, and the next day on the BS part, saleman was trying the hardest to make the sale and I was trying the hardest to tell him I can buy a game farm timeshare in zaire and trade up to the a slopeside ritz carlton club in Aspen. He called my bluff and I used their presentation computer to search the interweb (lucky they had it, it was a while ago) for the NYT article that I recently read which showed all the tricks of the trade, and after that, he gave up (my wife was actually starting to buy the sell, but after hearing the 30yr limit on ownership, I was able to persuade her back to my side). If I didn't pull that up, we would have been there for hours. Did get out right around 45min. Not sure how this thing could have ended in 45min if we actually agreed to buy it.

[TomZ]

Thanks everyone for the input. I appreciate your help. Lwang, I did one timeshare presentation in Maui... never again, lol. We actually bought the timeshare, but cancelled it the next day. As good as they were at high pressure sales, you should have heard the vitriol when we backed out. It was comedy. The lesson learned: IF you REALLY want to buy a timeshare, the secondary (used) market is the way to go. That was in 2008. We still receive calls asking us to sell our timeshare.