First I have to say this one is a little overdue as I thought I had already posted this, but had not. So forgive the lateness.

After extensive online searching for the best price on a rental vehicle on my trip to New Zealand last May, I settled on renting from Ace Rental, Airport branch.

We booked very early in that I booked the People mover (Van for those in the US) back in Oct when our trip wasn’t until the following May and got the best rate out of all the rental agencies I could find for Auckland.

Booking online we easy and convenient. The only confusion I had been when I got the confirmation it showed as “Tourism Enterprises Ltd trading as “Ace Rental Cars””.

When we arrived in Auckland we called the Airport branch from their courtesy phone at the airport and they arrived in their shuttle van with a trailer for our luggage within 10 mins.

At the branch, the staff were friendly and got us squared away with the paperwork rather quickly. We did opt for the full insurance which I think made the paperwork go much quicker.

Now here is where I had the only problems.

After getting the paperwork done, they walked us out to check out the vehicle and walked up to a car, this was not what we had reserved as we had reserved a People mover (Van for those in the US)

I showed them my booking receipt and they apologized and we walked back in while they got the People mover ready.  We went out and checked out the vehicle, put our luggage in and drove off.  This vehicle had a problem right from the start in that at about 50K it had a horrible engine noise and no acceleration and then the check engine light came on.  We immediately took it back and after waiting another 10-15 minutes they got us another People mover for us and we drove off into the city without issues this time.

We were very happy with this vehicle and had no issues with it while on our trip. At the time of our booking, they offered AA (AAA for those in the US) roadside assistance, if you needed it, but we did not, so I cannot speak to that. But most Auto Associations have very good service.

I would recommend getting the full insurance, as many roads outside of the city have loose stone and can easily chip the windshield, which did happened in our case. That and you do not have to deal with the large hold on you card (what they call Excess and Bond)

When we returned the People mover it only took a few minutes to check the vehicle in and the shuttle to take us to the departure terminal was already there, so we when right off to the terminal.

Despite the minor problems, I would still recommend this company due to the value for the service.  The next closest competitor was at least $300 more and that was a similar service to Ace.  If you went with the name brand agencies I would have spent over $1000 more.

Also, these are late-model vehicles with higher mileage than you would find at a name brand agency, but that is how they keep their costs down. Since they are late-model vehicles, the might get lower gas mileage/kilometers that a newer vehicle, but I in our case the gas consumption was about the same as a newer model and thus didn’t justify paying the higher rental fee. The vehicles all seemed well cleaned and in good shape as I checked out several of the cars while we were waiting for People mover to become ready.

I would take a copy of your rental confirmation with you and do one thing that I didn’t, call or email the branch you are renting from the day before just to confirm your reservation. This way they should have the right vehicle ready for you when you arrive.