Lessons from the road

On Friday we made a quick overnight trip up to Sydney to do a fundraising show for a client in Penrith. In order to keep costs down, I made all the travel arrangements over the internet and in the process learned a few things fellow travellers may find interesting.

1 - FLIGHTS

Booking on the internet you can get pretty much similar deals from Qantas or Virgin and, even better, they quote their fares including all taxes so it makes it much easier to compare.

We got Melbourne to Sydney return tickets for $301.60 each.

The reason we choose to fly Qantas is that we travel with 60kgs of checked baggage..

As we are Qantas Frequent Flyers we get to check in 2 pieces each (max 32kgs each), instead of the usual 1.

On Virgin they go by weight and give us 20kgs baggage each.

Last week we flew Virgin to Hobart and they charged us $155 excess each way! When I complained as it looked, according to their chart, they should have charged us between $40-$60 each way, they told us we had 80kgs (the receipts they gave us didn't have the weight listed so we couldn't argue) and if we thought we were being overcharged we needed to dispute it at the check-in counter.

LESSONS LEARNED:

1. Travelling with 60kgs of luggage, Qantas will always be cheaper.
2. If you have to travel Virgin, don't be afraid to hold up the check-in line questioning a charge because you won't get to later!

2 - CAR HIRE

I took advantage of an offer from Europcar to rent a Toyota Prius hybrid for $45 a day.

 

But unlike the airlines, they don't include taxes and other charges in their advertised prices.

• $45 rental charge
• $31.82 insurance
• $4.94 vehicle registration
• $2 credit card charge
• 16% premium location surcharge
• 10% gst

Total cost for a $45 hire car, $100.33

Plus petrol - if you bring the car back empty, Europcar charge $2.28 per litre to refuel.

They did have a great looking offer advertised of pre-paid petrol for only $1.50 per litre.

The catch - any fuel left in the tank when you return is theirs, and it's not really $1.50 per litre. That's right, even though their were no asterisks or small print on the signs, the cost was actually $1.50 per litre + tax. A total of $1.93 per litre.

Thankfully, even though we drove almost 200km, our hybrid only took $23 to refill it at the airport petrol station the next morning.

LESSONS LEARNED:

1. When reading car rental prices, remember it's a foreign currency and the exchange rate is really bad.
2. Never buy petrol from the same people you rent the car from.

3 - SYDNEY DRIVING

As we had to stop in the Sydney CBD on the way to Penrith, I printed some directions from Googlemaps. Unfortunately, there were some small errors like "Turn right from Goulburn St onto George St", which unfortunately is illegal and meant we had to drive a mass of one-way, no-turn streets down to Darling Harbour and try to find a way onto the Western Distributor.

We even had an unexpected 20 minute detour just to try to get into the public car park. (Bargain priced at $9 per hour).

Then there were the tolls - $5 + $2.20 + $3.80 plus another one we had to phone 13TOLLS to pay. (They told us it was cheaper to pay over the internet rather than the phone. So we had to pay $1.50 account set up fee, 75c vehicle recognition fee, and a toll of...? We still don't know, but we had to agree to pay it).

LESSONS LEARNED:

1. Don't trust Googlemaps
2. Visiting the Sydney CBD? Take a taxi!

4 - ACCOMMODATION

We drove back from Penrith after the show and stayed in an airport hotel so we could take an early flight back the next morning as Sue-Anne had filming the next day.

We could have stayed at The Stamford Plaza for $159

The Mercure for $169

The Holiday Inn for $129

I booked the Formule1 Hotel for $104

I figured that a bed was a bed... maybe so, but the walls at Formule1 seemed to be made of tissue paper as opposed to the slightly more soundproof cardboard walls in most hotels, and lots of people on our floor seemed to have very early 4am flights...

The bathroom was just a shower with a toilet and basin in it - so you really needed to use the toilet before showering, or else you had to dry the toilet before you could sit on it again. I didn't expect any toiletries or shampoos or a hairdryer either, but I was delighted they gave us a small piece of wrapped soap.

LESSON LEARNED:

1. Next time I'm paying the extra $25 and staying at the Holiday Inn.