I and others from my company travel to India quite often. We take car service from the hotel travel desks and it is quite expensive. Some examples:

• Le Meridien morning - DEL - Le Meridien evening - INR 2480
• Le Meridien - Gurgaon - waiting around to take from meeting to meeting - DEL - INR 4405

We've been told by our local partners that they rent cars w/drivers from Hertz considerably cheaper. They do have the advantage of massive volume and they are also invoiced directly. We don't have a local office so we can't be invoiced directly. I've checked the prices on the website of the Hertz India representative Carzonrent and they don't seem much cheaper assuming a similar class of car for a similar number of hours/kms.

Assuming the lack of a local office, what are others doing for ground transportation which is reliable (going to show up on time), trustworthy (want to feel comfortable leaving my laptop in the trunk if I want to go into a mall for lunch), redundant (can't depend upon a one-man show since if he's sick we still have meeting to attend) and available in various major cities in India (DEL, BOM, MAA, BLR, CCU, etc)?

There's Hertz / Carzonrent as you saw. There's another one called Akbar Travels, which also seems to have a prepaid taxi stand at the airport in most Indian cities.

http://www.akbartravelsonline.com/ca...pages/car.aspx

I've not used them for corporate travel, only as a prepaid taxi to get home from the airport, but from stuff I've heard from drivers (and seen) they seem to have contracts with several airlines for pickup / drop for aircrew based or laying over in MAA.

They mostly have Tata Indica subcompacts and Indigo sedans at MAA airport

I've used Hertz (with driver) on several trips to Southern India (Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, etc) and north (Delhi, Agra, etc)... definitely the way to go.

My suggestion is to have your "local partner" arrange it, and figure out a way to pay them... they have the relationship, trust and (not to be discounted) can get the "locals only" rate for you.

All my drivers thus far have spoken reasonable English.

I just played with an airport pickup booking in CCU with Hertz: 500 INR. ^ Thats really cheap. Only 100-200 Rs above a regular taxi!

Which Hertz site are you using?

The default USA one?

I haven't found anything as cheap in DEL/BOM/MAA....

www.carzonrent.com is the Hertz India franchisee's website.

The 500INR prices has a 40km/4h garage to garage caveat on it, but CCU to my mothers place is a 18km as the crow flies (google maps now has directions inside Kolkata ^) so it sounds plausible.

And yes, I used the website hserus mentions.

I always call the site to establish how far their garage is from the airport - so you don't get stuck with *extra* kilometers!

Other examples for taxi service on websites are:

www.irctc.co.in
www.yatra.com

I have found that Yatra's taxi vendors are normally not near the airport (MAA checked), so ymmv....

As posted above I used carzonrent before (2008) and defaulted to prepaid taxis in CCU since. Now going there with the family and noted that carzonrent is no longer with Hertz. Are they still good?

I have used carzonrent till abt 1 yr back, though not in CCU (mostly in Blr).. Its empanelled with many big Indian cos and I found their services reliable..

^^

i use them quite often & they are good & reliable....

hmmm... so I contact carzonrent for an estimate and get a response asking for my CC. Provide one, get a response that the card is getting declined. Provide a new one and get a cryptic booking confirmation. Then I ask about the estimated cost and no response. I'm sure the prices are decent and with the current INR/EUR exchange rate I'm not going to get peeved at the final cost, but their response is very strange...

surprising , since they have always replied quite promptly and efficiently for me.. but yes, I did use a email id specifically for my company..

Maybe share that with oliver2002?

Oh, that wont do since it needs to be from official id and for either employee travelling on business or employee travelling with family.. but employee needs to be there..