About Argus Car Hire

Argus Car Hire is a booking site founded in Ireland and now one of the brands run by CarTrawler, comparing rentals across tens of thousands of locations. An Argus Car Hire discount code applies to a booking rather than to a rental, and that distinction is the most useful thing here.

A broker is not the rental company

Argus owns no cars and runs no depots. It searches and resells the fleets of companies like Hertz, Avis and Europcar, so you pay the booking site but the rental agreement you sign at the counter is with the supplier. Anything that goes wrong with the car or a damage charge falls under that supplier's terms. Worth knowing whose customer you are before you complain.

The deposit is taken at the desk, in the driver's name

Paying in advance does not remove the hold the rental company places on the lead driver's credit card at pickup, covering the insurance excess plus fuel. The card must be in the lead driver's own name, and debit cards and cash are refused at many desks. That hold is the commonest reason a holiday starts badly.

What a collision damage waiver actually waives

Included cover almost never means zero liability: it caps what you owe at an excess that can be substantial. Third-party excess insurance is usually far cheaper than the counter's own upgrade, but it works by reimbursement, so the rental company still charges your card and you claim it back. It does not stop the deposit being held.

Fuel policy and the counter-only charges

Full to full means collect it full and bring it back full, and it is the fair policy. A prepaid tank means buying fuel at the supplier's rate, usually above the pump, with nothing refunded for what is left, so two quotes are not comparable until you compare fuel policies. Young driver surcharges, and in some countries older driver surcharges, are levied locally per day. So are additional drivers, child seats, one-way drop-offs and cross-border permission, which some suppliers refuse outright. Declare a border crossing or a ferry in advance, not at the barrier.

Using an Argus Car Hire discount code

Enter the code before payment and read what the booking total covers, since the counter-paid extras sit outside it. Codes here attach to a booking window and a rental period rather than to everything, and cannot be applied to a confirmed booking afterwards.