There has been a lot of talk about car hire in recent days with a report from the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) published earlier this week highlighting how as many as 43 per cent of Irish holidaymakers who hired a car overseas last year experienced problems.The types of issues people had to deal with will come as little surprise to anyone familiar with the process of car rental overseas.People complained about being overcharged. People complained about long wait times when it came to picking up their car. People complained about hidden charges. People complained about bookings being cancelled by companies at the very last minute.And they complained about added costs long after they returned the car to the airport and flew home.Reading about all the woes would almost turn you off hiring a car ever again, but while bad things can and do happen they are not inevitable and there are steps you can take to ensure that you are not among the travellers reporting a negative car hire experience in the next CCPC survey. Do your researchIt is very easy to save yourself from considerable heartache with a simple Google search. If you find a company that is offering you a car at a price that you think is reasonable, the very first thing you should do is spend five minutes looking at reviews of the company in that country on the likes of Yelp and Trustpilot. As you will no doubt be aware, the internet can be a very unforgiving place where people give out at the drop of a hat. If a car hire company routinely lets its customers down you will be able to find that information handily enough online.Don’t go for the cheapest carIt can be tempting to look only at the bottom line but the price you are quoted in the first instance is not always going to be what you end up paying. We heard from one reader recently who was delighted when they found a car hire company offering them deals of around €15 a day. They were less delighted when they arrived in the airport to find many others had been similarly enticed and the queue for pick-ups, was, they were told, more than two hours long. Helpfully, the company had a fast-track lane and they were told that if they paid over 70 quid they would be ushered to the top of the line. They handed over the cash and suddenly their cheap deal was a lot less cheap. Do search widelyThere are big car hire companies as well as smaller companies and online brokers that will help you find the best deal and aggregators including the likes of Skyscanner.ie or zestcarrental.com are useful when it comes to searching dozens of car hire companies as well as brokers and travel agents in an instant. They make it easy to filter search results based on fuel policy, air conditioning, transmission, pick-up, car size and a lot more. [ How car hire companies are catching some consumers outOpens in new window ]Don’t ignore the extras When booking a car, spend a few minutes adding up how much extras such as booster seats and additional drivers are likely to cost. Do make sure the car hire company has your flight details Not many people know that you have a fairly small window in which to pick up your car and if that window closes because your flight was delayed by six hours you might see your booking cancelled. If you find yourself in your departure airport facing a long delay make sure to contact the car hire company and tell them you will be late. That makes it much harder for them to cancel your booking and sell your car to someone else. Don’t assume the company will accept your debit card According to the CCPC, one of the frequent problems consumers face is booking with a debit card and then arriving at the desk and hoping to be able to drive off after providing the same debit card to the staff in the airport. Some car hire companies do accept debit cards, but many – particularly the smaller ones – do not. If you have any doubt you might be as well off to bring a credit card in the name of the person making the booking. Do think long and hard about the extra insurance Most car hire companies will try to sell you super-collision-damage-waiver insurance when you are picking up the car. They do this not because they are looking out for your best interests but because it is expensive and helps them to maximise their profits. That is not to say that you should always say no. It might add hundreds of euro to the cost of renting a car for a fortnight but it might also save you far more than that if you have the misfortune to drive into a bollard in a supermarket car park. Taking out the extra insurance also means the hire company won’t freeze a fairly hefty deposit on your credit card. It does depend on the funds you have and your appetite for risk but at the very least you should give the matter some thought before you get to the car hire desk so you are not strongarmed into making the wrong decision for you. Don’t assume the upgrade is good news We all love an upgrade, right? And they can happen at a car hire desk if the company doesn’t have the car that you paid for but does have one that is slightly better. The key thing is to make sure the company does not sneakily try to make you pay for an upgrade. The key to ensuring this does not happen is to read all the documentation put in front of you in the airport before signing anything. That is a big ask if you are hot and tired and surrounded by a cranky family who want their holiday to start, but if you sign the contract without reading it or asking the pertinent questions and are subsequently hit with a higher than expected charge, you might find you have little by way of comeback. Do spend a few minutes checking the car before you drive off If you see any scrapes or dents bring them to the attention of the staff before leaving the airport. And spend 60 seconds filming the inside and outside of the car on your phone before mailing the footage to yourself immediately, so you have incontrovertible proof of the state of the car at pick-up. Don’t put petrol in a diesel car Or worse still, diesel in a petrol car. It does horrendous damage that will cost you a fortune and no amount of insurance will protect you from that. Before you put so much as a drop of fuel in any car, ask yourself is it the right fuel. Do go for full-to-full Companies that make you pay for a full tank of petrol and return the car empty are chancers. Not only will they charge you twice the price of petrol at garages nearby, you will almost never get to use the fuel you pay for. What you want is a company that offers a full-to-full policy: that way you only pay for what you use. Don’t fill your car too far away from or too close to the airport Some companies are now insisting that you give them a receipt from a fuel station within 10km of the airport to prove that you filled the car near where you are dropping it off. It is ridiculous, of course, as the needle pointing to full should be enough to prove you did what you committed to doing. It is also worth doing a tiny bit of research so you avoid the forecourt closest to the airport. They know where they are and will charge you a proximity premium. Do your best to return the car when the hire company is open And make sure you have the car inspected by an employee and get the fact that the car is being returned in good working order in writing and signed by a rep from the company. If you must return the car outside working hours or are in a mad dash to make your flight, take pictures of the car when it has been parked in the designated area and use your phone to record a 90-second video. Mail the pictures and the footage to yourself.Don’t forget to keep an eye on your credit card account for a few months after you come home Some companies have an annoying tendency to add charges to your credit card weeks – even months – after you get home to cover damage, fines, tolls and more and it pays to be vigilant. You can contact us at OnTheMoney@irishtimes.com with personal finance questions you would like to see us address. If you missed last week’s newsletter by Dominic Coyle on how the UK ISA could be a model for the Government’s proposed investment accounts, you can read it here .