Best car rental agency

You can try AutoEuope.com, which is a New England based consolidator of rental cars. Depending location, you may go to Hertz or other brands of rental car companies to pickup and return your car. Often, you can get Hertz cars through them cheaper than you can get a car on Hertz.com. Just compare the rates online.

Note; If you join Hertz's frequent renter program, you'll receive lower price quotations online.

Another popular source is Sixt Car Rentals.

There are many rental car operations in Europe that go by names popular in the U.S. They are not all created equal, as some are franchise locations of U.S. companies. And some are sub-par in their operations.

I have used autoeurope.com many times. Generally, my car is picked up at a Europecar office (although my last one in England was a National Car Rental which is owned by Europcar). When you put in your information, autoeurope will display the rates as well as the company that is offering the rate. Based on that, I will address your criteria:

Many rental locations: Most areas have Europcar locations. They seem to be sprinkled everywhere. However, there is great variety in hours of operation and available cars. If I want to drop off or pick up early or late, I find I have to go to an airport or sometimes a train station. For example, we wanted to drop our car in Calais and catch the Eurostar to London there. However, their office closed early in the day on Saturdays, and the location was some distance from the train station. So we went to Lille instead. The office was open until 6:30 PM, and the drop off was right at the station.

No Hidden fees: I feel that Autoeurope is pretty transparent as long as you click on their information links. (For example. the one marked "what is included in your rental" also states what is not included. (Both England and France had a daily use fee that we had to pay separately, and we had a drop off fee in Great Britain for returning the car at a different location. All of this was clear to us before we left home). But you have to read the paperwork!!

helpful rental agent: Overall they have been great. We had one bad experience last fall, but I called Autoeurope's toll free number and they helped us through it. (An agent who was trying to force us to purchase extras and their insurance.) That call is one reason why I will use Autoeurope again. Having a go between was so beneficial when we hit that one agency that did not want to play fair. We walked away from that exchange without paying a dime more that we had agreed to upon making the reservation.

Autoeurope is just one agency. We also used Gemut once, and found them to be good as well. As far as companies go...I have heard over and over that just because you like a company here in the states, does not mean they will be good overseas. They may use the same name, but they are not necessarily the same company and the do not follow the same rules and guarantees. Having said that, I had a good experience with Hertz in 2002 in England and Ireland.

AutoEurope is a third party in the auto rental business. If you use Expedia to book your airlines, or booking.com for your hotel rooms, you may want to go with this or another auto consolidator. You can sometimes save money by doing so.

On the other hand, you sometimes spend more than if you do a little research and handle these bookings yourself. Check Kayak, which includes prices from AutoEurope, then go directly to the rental companies' websites to make sure you are comparing apples to apples and not apples to oranges. Companies like Sixt and Europcar maintain websites that are clear, concise, accurate and furnish more detailed and accurate information than you are likely to get with a consolidator, especially in a phone conversation.

When you bring a third party into an otherwise straightforward transaction, whether booking airfare, hotel rooms or car rental, and something goes wrong, the other parties often blame each other, and you could end up holding the bag.

Thanks for all the responses. This is helpful. One more issue with car rental and that is fuel type. Has anyone rented a diesel car in France? I've heard many cars in France are diesel cars. Which rental car companies rent diesel (I haven't found any)?

Important side note.... We went with Auto Europe and arrived in Koln Germany to the Avis counter. Our car was upgraded and the price was great. We were singing papers in Germany so really wasn't exactly sure what we were signing. The agent said your car is covered up to $1500 for damages and I said is that included and she said yes. Long story short we had signed for the extra insurance which oddly enough was literally almost the same amount as the car rental. So I thought I was just singing for the car rental when in fact I was signing for the insurance. So we paid $434 for the car rental and $443 for the insurance.

I tried to fight it with avis, auto europe and my credit car company as we use that car for our insurance and I was denied but all.

Make sure they give you paper in English. Request it when you book and call auto Europe to book the car don't book online that way you can request English documents.

One-stop rental shopping could be convenient, but doing our due diligence we usually check with Auto Europe and directly on individual companies' Websites. The last few times, we got the best price by booking directly with Europcar, and they've been great to work with in France and other countries. Regarding extra insurance charges as described above by lindalemire, that's a good point - if you're planning to use any insurance coverage provided by your credit card issuer, make sure you understand all their requirements and limitations. If you want peace of mind that could come from "complete coverage," as purchased from and provided by the car rental company, ensure you know all the details, as well. Hopefully you won't have any accidents or need to file an insurance claim, but be prepared with all the information you might need before an incident occurs.

Once, we reserved a diesel (Europcar, I think), but they didn't have any available in our size/price category when we arrived. The company's Website may show you a specific make and model, but you might get something similar when you actually show up at the rental counter. We got a gasoline Fiat that time, and it got pretty good gas mileage. Don't know if it's the same over in France right now, but unleaded gas is much cheaper than diesel in the USA, so that might be a factor. See if you can request a diesel when you reserve, whether online or through other means.

In France, diesel fuel is called "gazole." Unleaded is "sans plomb."

Sixt has deisel cars. I've used the company several times. It's never shown up when I looked at autoeurope. For insurance I use American Express Premium which is first dollar coverage for $25 per rental, not per day. I always book directly with the company. Any discounts such as corporate or AAA won't be offered on a consolidator site in my experience.