Hello,
We made a reservation at Auto Europe for Europcar in Paris. If at the pick-up counter the agent says they are out of the class of cars we reserved but have a car from a more expensive higher class, are we expected to pay the price difference for this forced "upgrade"?
Thank you.
Nope.
No-cost "upgrades" are common.
One advantage of using Auto Europe is their toll free 24 hours help line. If anything ever happens where you feel you are being pressured into something more expensive for any reason, you can call them. I had to do it once. (my situation did not involve an upgrade, but I was being told I had to buy their insurance.) I called the toll free number and walked out with my car for the price I had paid Autoeurope. Fortunately, the other 9 times I have used Autoeurope have been trouble free. So the odds are you will have a good experience.
Do not worry. You will not be charged extra. If they don’t have a car in the class you ordered, or for example, in order to get a specified automatic transmission they provide a different class of car, they will not charge you more than what the Auto Europe reservation price quoted. Aside from possibly needing a bigger parking space, the only drawback to having an “upgrade” might be getting slightly worse fuel economy from a larger vehicle.
I doubt you have anything to worry about. If you are in Paris before you pickup your rental, I would contact the rental office a day before pickup to guarantee availability.
You might also have Autoeurope´s contact number nearby and know how to dial it just in case you need them. If there are any problems at the pickup desk, or anytime thereafter, call Autoeurope and let them handle the situation.
Your replies put my mind at ease. We are also considering renting at a small city like Chartres. Is there any risk of the rental office not having an automatic transmission car as reserved when we go to pick it up? We don't know how to drive a manual transmission one.
We drive a manual, so I can't give any first hand experience. As a general rule:
Using Autoeurope would give me more confidence that they will have an automatic. It is a large consolidator and they carry some weight within the industry. I have tried to book in a smaller venue and they have come back and said what I required was unavailable. That was done at the time of booking.
The other problem with smaller venues are restrictions on opening and closing times. (Particularly if you are picking up or dropping off on the week end.) Once again, Autoeurope will not book you with a place that won't be open. (exception will be returning the car. You are allowed to return your car when they are not open at some places...but these are usually large places and/or airports). Even then, Autoeurope warned me we would be returning to a place that wasn't open at that time. I had to agree to that before booking.)
Since you have already booked a car with Autoeurope, I recommend you call them directly if you are thinking of adjusting your reservations. (much easier than canceling and re-booking) They are very helpful and certainly can answer these questions with more experience than I have.
Yes, you will likely have to pay more. That happened to me in 2017 at Heathrow and they were going to give me "an equivalent" vehicle that was not sufficient for our needs. I paid a lot for an upgrade.
I will never rent from Europcar through Auto Europe again.
And we were given an upgrade of not one, but 2 car-classes at Europcar in Paris once. It depends on who is at the counter, what the corporation is ordering at that moment, the time of year. Close to any holiday or vacation period, all the companies run low on stock. We've rented with Europcar about 60% of the time over the past 25 years. It's been mostly fine with the occasional hitch.
geovagriffith
That's interesting. My one problem rental (see above) was at Heathrow too. It was with National (which is owned by Europcar). The agent tried to upgrade us constantly with extras like navigation. It included telling us we would have to have a small car (I recognized it at the time but don't remember the name) as that was all that was left. The car was the same model they used as an example for a cheaper classification when we rented. When I said "we went with a better class and that car was listed as less expensive", he assured me it met the requirements of our car class (we were four people) In the end, I refused to upgrade. We walked out and a nice male worker in the car area told us to pick whatever we wanted in the row. We ended up with bigger car. I have issues with this company in London for sure. However, europcar has treated us very well in other countries. (Including a rental in France on the same trip). I came home and found lots of examples of this kind of pressure at Heathrow. It made me wonder what their business model is in this location. (commissions? pressure to perform?, etc)
The only time I was pressured to upgrade was also at Heathrow. I booked through Auto Europe and surprise, surprise, it was with Europcar. The man at the counter suggested that we might like a better car. I asked him if it was more expensive. Of course the answer was yes and I politely rejected his suggestion. I’ve had cars through Europcar in other countries without any problems. One word of warning about picking up a car in a smaller location - I picked up a car in Perpignan, France just before they closed for lunch. They rushed me through the paperwork, handed me the key and said they were closing. My friend and I went out to the car and they made me immediately move it out of the lot so they could lock the gate. I parked on the street so I could figure everything out before I drove off.
Recently rented from Europcar in France (Nantes) and in England (Gatwick). Both times we'd reserved a small, manual car - we drive manual transmission in the US and prefer it. At Gatwick they wanted to give us a bigger car and we declined, because we knew we'd be driving on tiny roads. So they gave us what we'd reserved. At Nantes they gave us a slightly larger car with automatic transmission, saying that was all that was available, and they thought that as Americans we'd prefer automatic. In neither case was there any question of an additional charge for an upgrade, although if you reserve an automatic in France it's quite a bit more expensive. Other car rental experiences in Lyon this spring suggest that cars are in somewhat short supply.
