Please sign in to post.

car rental Germany

Posted by (Washington DC) on

I had a great experience renting a car in Germany that I used in Austria, Germany and France for two weeks. I booked the car thru gemut.com. The car rental service is a family owned business in Oregon. It allows reserving and paying for the car in US dollars vs paying in local currency in Europe. We picked up the car from a mall outside Munich and returned the car to the airport after two weeks. There was no hitch. All went smoothly. There was no up-sale attempts and they accepted my US credit card insurance coverage.

When I rented thru Thrifty a year ago at the Munich airport, I had to go thru the Buchbinder desk at the airport. They charged me additional fees at the time of rental that doubled the costs. Surprise!

the gemut.com website also has great information on car insurance on rentals in Europe.

Posted by
8138 posts

Glad to hear you had such a positive experience.

Virtually every rental car picked up at airports will have additional taxes, tariffs or charges--in the U.S. or in Europe. If at all possible, try to pickup your rental car in a city location as you're leaving town. You can often return cars to airports without the additional charges.

Posted by
1633 posts

Are you asking a question about car rentals or giving us a trip report? AutoEurope and Kemwell are also great car rental brokers to go through. I use their service and always rent my cars through Europcar. You have great info which would benefit people looking at the Trip Reports section of this forum.

Posted by
19092 posts

I'm glad your recent experience was better than the previous one.

For all of my trips in the last 10 or so years I have calculated the cost of my itinerary using public transportation, then gotten quotes from car rental companies (including the one you mention). I have always found renting a car without CDW coverage to cost 2 to 3 times the cost of public transportation.

I would never rely on my credit card insurance. Read the small print. For my CC I would have to pay the damage claim up front, then try to get the card company to reimburse me for the claim, providing them with whatever documentation the require. If I can't get the documentation they require, I don't get reimbursed. With public transportation, I have no liability.

I have never been successful at getting Gemut to give me a quote including CDW, even when I specifically asked for it.

Posted by
10344 posts

This should be posted in the Trip Reports section, so more people will see it.

Lee is one of our most experienced travelers to Germany travel. I'd like to see the OP, or someone, address some of the points Lee brought up.

This topic has been automatically closed due to a period of inactivity.