Car Hire - What Not To Do This is my experience in hiring a rent a car and this is what not to do. My misadventure happened in the late 1980s. I wanted to visit some friends several hundred miles away. At the time I lived in a small town in the country. I didn't own a car and there was no direct convenient bus or train service to where my friends lived. I decided to take the bus, then rent a car, at the nearest place available.