Car rental car seats

Posted: Mon, Apr 12 2010, 10:30 pm Post subject: car rental car seats

Can anyone tell me about renting a car with car seats?
I see this is an option when renting a car.

Does it only apply to car seats being built into minivans?
Or is it a regular toddler/booster seat.
I'd love to not have to fly with 2 toddler car seats--but only if I'm guaranteed safe car seats.

Someone, give me direction please.
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Gold Member Joined: Jul 22 2007 Posts: 1219

When I rented a car I was able to also reserve a carseat (was a Cosco Scenera, if that's relevant).

Posted: Mon, Apr 12 2010, 11:03 pm Post subject: re: car rental car seats

That is relevant. Thanks.

Posted: Wed, Apr 14 2010, 3:38 pm Post subject: re: car rental car seats

We rent with separate carseats/booster seats. Not built-in type. You should be able to designate what types you need (rear-facing infant, forward facing child, booster). Though you need to verify--once they had a child seat that was too small for one of my kids who needed a booster. The counter rep needed another 15min to get the correct seat. They should come already installed when you pick up a car.

Diamond Member Joined: Nov 11 2007 Posts: 3794

We have done this 3 times. Every time we had challenges. The seats they had (Graco and some other brand, Cosco I believe?) were not what we use in our own cars, nor did the cars have latch systems in 2 cases, so we had no clue how to install and nobody there will do it for you. So we struggled, installed to the best of our ability and then got to the nearest inspection place to have them checked and reinstalled if necessary, which it was. There were also delays at the rental place because they brought infant seats instead of toddler seats, brought seats missing latches, etc. It really was a pain, but we have 3 in car seats and just couldn't deal with schlepping them all.

Gold Member Joined: Nov 27 2008 Posts: 1635

I've also done this a few times but they never came already installed in the car. We always had to install them after but we never had an issue with them as far as safety. I found that with traveling unless you're going to use the car seats on the plane it's so not worth the extra shlep.

Silver Member Joined: May 07 2009 Posts: 591

We once rented a car and needed two toddler car seats. They were really cheap to add to the rental, but they didn't install them for us (most places won't because they don't want liability). It wasn't so hard to install them ourselves, but they were pretty old seats and didn't adjust so smoothly when we would try to adjust them as we got our kids in and out of the car.

Posted: Wed, Apr 14 2010, 6:34 pm Post subject: re: car rental car seats

we were once quoted $10 a day for a carseat. Shocked

So check the price first! At that price it may be cheaper to buy one and throw it out.

another place it was cheaper or free but old battered looking seats.

Gold Member Joined: Jul 27 2007 Posts: 1698

manhattanmom, I don't know if this is a help, but when we flew, we were able to check our car seat in curbside. I thought about renting a car seat but its so much extra and didn't make sense. There are places that rent car seats in different locations and they tend to be cheaper. However, no way to get that from the airport in many cases! In the long run, it was really no big deal (ok, maybe a drop of extra work, but not awful) to take the car seats out of the car, drop them off at the conveyer belt and get it back when we landed. And like this we knew it was the exact car seat we wanted.