Europcar- Best or Bust?

We rented using Autoeuropa...a consolidator...and it ended up being with europcar. We were happy with the service...our only thing was when we picked up the car it was only 3/4 full of gas and you are supposed to leave it full. That was our bad - first time renting a car and we didn't notice. Next time we will check first. But we had no issues with them. EDIT - it was Autoeurope...typing on my ipad - not as easy as on the reg keyboard :)

Autoeuropa is different than AutoEurope. Don't mistake the former for the latter!!!

I booked through AutoEurope.com, a consolidator in New England. I picked up and returned the car to Hertz in Italy. Their price beat my corporate rate at Hertz.com. European car rentals are not all created equal, and some familiar U.S. rental car brands in Europe are nightmares due to their just being franchised operations.
Stick with a Hertz or AutoEurope or another company with a good reputation.

I always use AutoEurope for my rentals. As someone mentioned, they are a consolidator that is based in Maine. They find the best prices with the various car rental companies. Ive always been happy with their service. For my rental in France my car was with Europcar. It was my first rental with them and there was good and bad. The car was great. My experience with picking up the car, not so much. I picked it up in Perpignan, and chose what was called the Downtown location to avoid the extra charge at the train station. It turned out to be nowhere near downtown and I think I paid more in cab fare than my savings. We arrived at the office just before lunch. They rushed me through the process, didn't have a local map, and then forced me to leave their parking lot before I became familiar with the car so they could lock up for lunch time. I guess my problem is really more with the experience of picking the car up at that location as opposed to having a problem with the entire company.

There's not a thing wrong with Europcar I've used them all over the world for years. It's not that I favor them, it's just that I use kayak and go with who ever has the best deal. Regarding consolidators, realize that all they do is commit to blocks at a place and date/s. At any given moment they may or may not have the best deal, which is why I use kayak. Sometimes Autoeurope wins, sometimes they don't. The only consolidator I'd avoid is Holiday Autos which has started showing up in the kayak matrix the last year or so. I've tried them once in Cairo and once somewhere in the UK. Both times everything was so completely screwed up that I walked over to the next counter and asked those dudes to match my quote - - which they did. Regarding Autoeurope, just realize that once you pick up the car, any problems during the period have to be worked out with ever who you actually have the contract with, not Autoeurope. To illustrate: Early last year I was rammed by a drunk in Melbourne, making the car a complete undriveable mess. As soon as I'd taken care of the legal crap, I called the rental agency. A new car and a wrecker arrived in about fifteen minutes. I'd booked the car through Autourope who had foisted me off on ............Europcar.

I've rented from Europcar in France a number of times, although always through a consolidator (AutoEurope or Kemwel), and found them fine. And next month I'm renting with them directly since getting an automatic for one-way rentals through a consolidator is now more difficult. I too have read a number of negative things about Europcar, but then again, I've read the same about pretty much any car rental company.

I'm like Ed. I always shop and go with the best deal for the trip I'm planning. We used Europcar on our last trip to Spain and they were fine; everything was as advertised with one small change. When I picked up the car, I asked for a diesel and they charged me an extra 5 euro. I didn't mind because I saved a lot more that that on gas (we kept the car for 22 days).

Thanks for some great responses to my question. Perhaps most bad experiences are due to not following the rules of the company.