Following the tragic death of a friend in the south of France, I had cause to be looking at car hire websites at the weekend. The plan was to rent something cheap and cheerful for 12 hours maximum on Wednesday from Toulouse airport. Hardly peak time or location you would have thought. I reckoned on shelling out £40 or £50, knowing that European breakdown cover would be included.

But after five minutes of online searching it seemed I was well wide of the mark. An aggregator website found what it said was the best deal, a hefty £122 for a Renault Twingo (pictured), or something equivalent in size! It even had a little starburst logo on the car, proclaiming this was ‘excellent value!’ How is that excellent value?! I know it’s short-notice but, for crying out loud, but that's ludicrous. Does anyone actually pay that sort of money?

On a whim I wondered if it would be cheaper to rent it for a longer period; the answer was no… but it threw up an interesting result, because I could have the car for three days for £194. So 72 hours is £194 but 12 hours is £122? How does that work? How is that right? How am I not getting completely fleeced?

Thankfully, a trawl round some individual company websites proved more fruitful and eventually I got what I wanted for £54. But here’s the thing; if aggregator sites are supposed to help save you time and money by offering the best deal, why didn’t it? So annoying, and at a time when I’ve got more important things to be worrying about. Like how a 10-month-old little boy called Leo is going to be growing up without his daddy…