twk

I'm renting a Renault Espace Van from Euoropcar through Auto Europe. I have pre-paid for the rental ($1400 for 10 days) a $0 CDW, however, my understanding is that Europcar will still require a deposit on the vehicle. Can anyone give me a clue as to what kind of a deposit we are talking about, in dollars or euros?

Sarastro

The deposit is usually an imprint of your credit card, taken in the even of an accident.

That´s rather expensive for 10 days, I assume it was the insurance which caused the increased price. Most credit card companies will cover CDW at no charge to you and most rental company plans are only secondary insurance with very high deductibles or excesses.

American Express has a plan with full primary insurance for $25 when using their card. It´s the best deal of which I am aware.

Final note, Autoeurope quotes generally do not include taxes, airport or train station pickup surcharges, additional driver fees, or environmental fees. These are paid at drop off.

Christina

I don't think it's the cost of the car or anything, they make sure you have some kind of insurance. They put a hold on your CC for the estimated amount of the rental cost, that's all.

apersuader65

Our recent rental in Caen was for 265E The deposit was 560E. I believe it's based on the car's value though. Had a problem doing it myself, as the card I paid the rental with only had 300E in credit left and the agent said she couldn't use another card. Don't know why. She did take, interestingly enough, my debit Visa, I assume because it was cash? When it cleared, they released the car. I was concerned that I would have to fight out the $800.00 charge with my bank, but I guess they just got preapproval for that amount and it never actually went through as a charge.

StCirq

That seems like a lot for a 10-day rental of an Espace, even with the lousy exchange rate. I rented an Espace for 10 days a few years ago for exactly half that, but perhaps it's the insurance (I had, and used, the Amex plan mentioned above). At any rate, yes, all they do is take an imprint of your cc in case you do major damage to the car.

twk

Thanks for the info. If it was just me, I might rely on the credit card coverage, but we've got a group of six, and I really don't want any coverage questions to come up should something happen, so I opted for the AE rate that included no CDW deductible. After posting, I talked to Auto Europe and they thought that any additional charges would be limited to extras like an additional driver or such, but they weren't sure. At any rate, they were pretty confident that they wouldn't be blocking out several thousand dollars for the value of the vehicle (which could be a problem).

Michael

The additional charges are specified in the fine print: Airport or RR station pick-up, road tax, a possible pollution tax depending on the type of car driven.

ParisAmsterdam

I think you'll also get charged an extra fee for each additional driver as well.

Dukey1

I'm not sure that insurance offered by rental agencies is "secondary" since most times people use that expensive option so they don't HAVE to involve their primary carrier in any way whatsoever.

grandmere

In May we had a small 4-door (they called it mid-size) Mercedes with automatic transmission, GPS (inc. 2 extra drivers) for a week from Hertz in Avignon and paid $448. Used cc for CDW.

kerouac

The guarantee for a sub-compact at Europcar generally starts at 600€, so I would expect an Espace to be at least 1000€ if not more. Of course this is not debited, but it does make your payment card behave as though you had just spent that amount, so make sure that you have a comfortable ceiling on expenses -- or a second card.

I found this out once when I had rented 3 cars in one month and I hit the ceiling of my card -- the guarantees were still in effect even though the first two rentals were long finished. An angry call to my bank got the problem solved, but not until 24 hours had passed.