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Car rental

Has anyone rented cars from Europcar in Bruges. From Google maps, this seems to be the closest rental agency to our hotel. They seem to be substantially less expensive than the other rental agencies in Bruges...so I am curious as to their quality and service.

Posted by
84 posts

I used Avis near the train station, I would recommend them.

Posted by
6227 posts

I don't know about this particular agency, but I have rented cars from Europcar in the past and have always been happy with their quality and service (and price!).

Posted by
15 posts

thank you both. The Avis agency is farther away than Europcar...But I will contact both and see if I can get the bottom line of costs including all the hidden fees.

Posted by
84 posts

I used kayak or priceline, picked up Friday and dropped off Monday. It was 77 euros, less than I expected. I walked it from the city center. A smaller car than the US, manual transmission.
Parking is cheap by the station, if you need it. 3.50 euros for 24 hours and the ticket can be used for a bus transfer.
I parked the car by the station in the morning, went to the city center, and dropped off the car later.

Posted by
3940 posts

I've used Europcar (EC) via Autoeurope (AE) twice in France - and am using them again for another rental in France next month. We are renting in Nice, and I went thru ALL the car rental places at the Nice airport - for the car we required (automatic, compact) EC had the best price - our EC rental is $570Cdn...Hertz was 620 (Hertz was slightly cheaper if we wanted to pay in advance, by about $10), Avis was 760, Budget was 700. Last two rentals were a Volkswagen Touran and a Citroen Cactus.

What I did finally realize - after seeing much cheaper prices on AE (and I confirmed this with one of the agents on the Europcar chat) - is that EC has the fees all in, whereas AE charged for the car rental itself, but all the final fees were paid at drop off (in France, it added up to another $165 Cdn top of the regular cost - fees for using the airport, fees for having an automatic, daily highway fees and whatnot). So this way - going direct with EC - we won't have any surprises at the end (and yes, it took me two car rentals to realize this - don't judge).You should be able to look at what is included in the rental price.

The only issue we had - and it was more of a mistake on my part - we got a substantial scrape on our last rental. We used our Amex coverage, but I needed the paperwork on the damage. I contacted EC 3-4 times with no reply. As a last ditch, I contacted AE and had the info in 2 days. I guess because we went thru AE for the rental, I should have left EC out of it altogether.