I am travelling to Italy with my two children, 5 and 7. I have booked car hire with Hertz but was staggered to learn that it charges £23 (35 euros) for each of the booster cushions my children need to comply with EU car seat rules. This is daylight robbery. Instead, I have bought two booster cushions for £7 each, saving me about £32. Surely booster cushions should be provided free of charge? We aren’t charged an additional fee for seat belts, which are a similar legal and safety requirement. Julia Peduzzi, Beckenham, Kent

Chloë Bryan-Brown of Times Travel responds: Like snow chains, which I would argue should also be provided free of charge where they are a legal and safety requirement, car seats and boosters are classed by car-hire companies as optional accessories.

Hertz’s fee is not over the odds (Europcar charges about £30), but after talking to us it said you had made a valid point, and as a result it had decided to review prices charged for booster cushions in Italy. If you do take your own booster or car seat, you should check with your airline’s terms and conditions first. For example, because toddlers on Ryanair do not have any baggage allowance, the airline insists that equipment such as car seats and travel cots are counted as part of the accompanying adult’s baggage allowance and must be paid for accordingly.

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