Car rentals in France

We rented from Avis in France, some years ago. My father had the reservation. We had some problems. They charged him an extra $400 that he had to fight to get taken off. And when we returned the car for our early morning flight - they weren't open yet! Panic! What do you do with the keys?

My wife and I have rented from Hertz in France (excellent) and Auto Europe (okay) in Switzerland.

Be sure to make your deal from here. You get the best deal reserving the car before you leave home. Rental car service over there is not the same as we are used to. Much lower-key.

I recommend AutoEurope, a consolidator that gets you the best rate from among the companies with which it has contracts. If you find a better rate by contacting a company directly, AE will either match or beat it. You can book at www.autoeurope.com, but it's a good idea to call their toll-free number and ask about any specials that don't appear on the Web site.

I have this same question--my husband and I will be staying in Paris and then thinking about renting a car to drive to Brugge, then Amsterdam, then back to Normandy, then back to Paris. Is this logical or should we just take a train for the majority of it? We want a car for day trips in Belgium and Amsterdam and Normandy because we were told the countryside isn't easily accessible any other way.

Jennifer, we faced the same dilemma. We're going from Paris to Normandy, through Sarlat to Provence. We found that the trains weren't that frequent. We would have had take 1 or 2 destinations off of our trip.

The reason I've asked the question about going through Costco is that they contract with the big US agencies, and in addition to discounts for booking online, you also don't have to pay for an extra driver (some of the European sites charge an additional 18.25 a day). I haven't compared all of the other costs yet, but in doing a rough comparison of all the main European sites, the base price for either Hertz or Avis is cheaper. We will pick our car up in Versailles, if possible, so as not to have to deal with downtown Paris traffic our first day driving on foreign soil.

We also learned that between our credit card insurance when renting the car, our existing car insurance and umbrella, we won't need any of the additional insurances (though we called each one to check).

We've rented lots of cars in France and will only say that, whomever you get, make sure to note any and all dents on the car before you leave the pickup point. This is because otherwise they may try to charge you for them.

Oh and another thing, you will likely get a French car that will occasionally tell you information in French about the car operations. Bring along a phrasebook to decipher. A good example is that several years ago our Renault kept telling us about our "frein de main." (which turns out to mean "parking break") and until we looked it up we didn't realize it was telling us that our parking brake was still engaged.