Kilometre Allowances Explained

At Long Term Car Rental, our KM allowances are based on a cumulative total over the entire period of your rental.

If, for example, you select a KM allowance of 72km per day for a 61 day rental term, you have a total of 4392km to use over the whole period of your car rental or car subscription.

You might have a holiday rental and drive straight to Byron Bay (191km from our depot) – but then, you might sit on a beach for two days drinking cocktails and not use your car for the whole weekend! This scenario is perfectly OK, as you do not need to specifically drive 72km every day – you can go over or under as long as you are under the total KMs allowed at the end of your rental period.

When choosing a KM allowance for your car subscription or long term car rental, you want to try and select the option that best reflects your average regular usage.

The most accurate way to do this is jump on google maps and do a quick distance check of your regular routes (i.e. home to school to work to home or whatever your daily routine consists of!).

Next, consider your weekend activities and any upcoming trips. If you have some long distance driving in view, you may want to go with the upper bracket to your regular KM usage. Alternatively, if you don’t drive much over the weekends or you’re travelling and not using your vehicle for a few weeks you might go with the lower option.

We always recommend keeping track of your KM allowance throughout your rental period. If you have the incorrect KM allowance on your car subscription or long term car rental, it is best to adjust this as soon as possible to avoid any accumulation of excess charges or overpayments.

If you return your vehicle over in KMs, the excess KMs will be charged at .20 cents per km over. It works out much cheaper to adjust your KM allowance and pay as you go, rather than be hit with an unexpected excess KM bill at the end of your car rental.

It is also important to track your KMs to ensure you are not paying too much! We allow you to lower your KM allowance retrospectively at any time throughout your car rental and will credit your account for the difference. However, we will not provide a cash refund for unused kilometres at the end of a car rental or car subscription.

1. There is a tripmeter on your vehicle which we recommend utilising for at least the first 3-4 weeks of your long term car rental or car subscription.

Particularly if you live a fair distance from us or go on a long trip, one week may not give an accurate reflection of your regular usage but at 3-4 weeks you generally have a pretty good idea of your average kms.

2. When you collect your long term car rental or car subscription, we will provide you with the details of KMs it had on collection, the KM allowance you have selected and the KMs the car should be on return so you can see how you’re tracking.

3. You can always just ask! Feel free to email or call us at any time with your odometer reading handy and we would be happy to assess whether any adjustment is required.

There are two ways to change your KM allowance and we can recommend what is best based on your circumstances.

The first option is to adjust the allowance for the full term of your rental.

We recommend this if you’re early on in your car rental period and have determined that the incorrect allowance has been selected for the whole time you’ve had the car.

If you have decreased the rate, a credit will be provided towards your next week’s rental charges for the extra fees you have paid. If you have increased the rate, you will be charged the difference in rate for the full term to cover the KMs you have used.

The second option is to close out your existing booking and start a new booking at a different rate.

We recommend this if you have been sticking to your KM allowance on your existing booking but you anticipate that your KM usage is going to increase from a certain date, maybe due to a relocation or change of job.

In this instance, it would be best to close out the booking at the lower rate so you don’t get any retrospective charges, then start the new rate from the date your KMs are intended to increase.

Any changes to your KM allowance apply to your whole booking – you cannot just increase the allowance for a section of your car rental period. Because of this, we generally don’t recommend increasing your allowance if you’re going to exceed the allowance as a ‘once off’.

Particularly if you keep your long term car rental or car subscription for a long period, your km usage will generally average out to reflect your regular driving. However, if you are concerned that a long trip has thrown this out too much, just check in with us for the few weeks after the trip to see if any increase is needed. If your usage does drop back down, we can always decrease the allowance again as required.

We can keep the existing booking running on your long term car rental or car subscription if you are swapping to a vehicle of the same make/model and rate. In this event, the KMs will average out over the full booking despite the car swap.

If you are upgrading or downgrading to a vehicle of a different make/model or rate, we will need to close out your existing booking and create a new one. In this case, the kms will not continue accumulating across both bookings.

Car swaps are another reason why it’s very important to have the correct KM allowance selected which best reflects your average usage. If you swap cars and you’re over in KMs, the excess KM charges will be payable before collecting the new vehicle. Similarly, if you have selected an allowance much higher than what you’re using, any unused KMs unfortunately cannot be transferred over to the new booking or refunded on return.