Philip, I booked with the fr site of autoeurope for a pickup and return in Madrid. My rate was inclusive, for 18 days it will be $34 per day. It was better than the ae.com site for price and car selection. Our rental is not until May so hopefully I will have nothing but positives to report after our trip Deborah

We have a group of 8 friends going to Florence on May 23rd.

Will any of y'all be back before then? I may see a trend here.

Philip

Terrific thread. We are going to Italy in May and last night I saved about $700 by using the Italian site instead of the US site.

My concern, however, is that I'll get stuck with Europcar, which gets awful reviews no matter where you look them up on the net. The Europcar site was even cheaper than AE, but I will pay the extra to AE to avoid the horror stories that others have reported. If AE books me through Europcar I guess it'll be back to square one.

Well, if I may add to the mix, when booking a car for pick up in Germany and driving to Croatia, I was given an extremely high deductible of $1500. (We've booked dozens of cars in Europe and have never been quoted this high deductible before this call.) I told Auto europe about my comparison rate of economycarrentals.com that was the same price but without any deductible. The agent, from the Maine office, said he could use the Europe website rather than the North American website to make the change for me so I would have no deductible.

It mayn't hurt to ask if they would do this for you.

While checking our credit card companies, we found the cc companies varied in coverages. Some didn't cover past 15 days, others didn't cover some countries. I would absolutely visit the cc company website and print out the coverages.

Good Luck!

Hi again, Philip --

We're not back until after Memorial Day (5/26) so I think I'll just miss being able to report on our experience.

Otherwise, to answer Stu, I booked using the website. I appreciate the tips, though, and might just call a bit closer to the date...

Thanks and good luck!

Hi D,

Are you sure that it was Europcar and not EuropAcar that had the bad reviews?

Hi esm,

Ask both CapitalOne and Amex to send you the details of the insurance coverage.

I really appreciate all of the information you have provided. I am going to Italy, so CDW is required. The deductible is quite high on both CDW and theft and since italy has one of the highest theft rates in the world.... I went to the Italy site and it was about $100 cheaper than the US site - however it was difficult to figure out what the cost would be for zero dedutible.

I went to the Auto Europe Canada site as someone suggested and the car rental included zero deductible on both the CDW and Theft plus a free upgrade. I called them to check - told them I was from the US - they don't care and were happy to help me. The cost was about $65 less and that includes zero deductible (not offered outright on the US site) We are only renting for 3 days so the prices are quite high so of course the savings are less than if we were renting for longer.

I think I am going to go with this rental - comfort factor plus English speaking with an 800 number helps.

My research showed that the UK site was even cheaper than the italian site but the no dedutible still swayed me to Canada. I too am going about the same time as everyone else - May 22 to 26. Thanks!

>How does citizenship factor in here? I've never been asked for passport or any other proof of citizenship when renting a car.

Not at all.
Diverse guidelines (=>laws) of the EU prohibit businesses of any kind (except defense related... not a cetegory one would put a car rental in) from differentiating prices based on citizenship or residence place of the buyer. Some countries (notably Italy) find a few loopholes to continue residence-based discrimination - things like railway discoutn cards come to mind - but it is only a question of time until somebody will start a process in the European Court about that.

FYI

Called AutoEurope US today and they said if US citizens reserve through non USA AutoEurope websites that they will be charged extra when they pick up the automobile. Based on common sense and previous post, hard to believe that that is anything other than a company line.

QUESTION
The 800 number listed on Canadian AutoEurope website is the USA number. I could not locate a local telephone number to call Canada directly. Does anybody know the regular telephone number (not the toll free) for AutoEurope Canada?

Hi Philip -- I would agree that this has to be a line. When we reserved, our card was already charged the amount on the Italian site. Not to mention, we entered our US address when reserving.

I can't imagine getting there and having them say, "oh, you're american! we have to charge you extra". That would be kind of nuts.

Good luck!

Hello again, Philip (and everyone else who might be wondering about this) --

I am reporting back to say that my husband and I <b>successfully</b> rented a car through the Italian version of the Auto Europe site (http://www.autoeurope.it/) and saved something like $200 doing so. We picked the car up in Florence on our way out to Tuscany. The agent was very helpful, spoke English, looked at my hubby's passport, International Driver's Permit, and the credit card used to pay for the rental. He explained that we had the full insurance coverage and sent us on our way. It literally took 10 minutes and nationality was never an issue. =)

When we returned the car, nobody even inspected it. We just dumped it off at the Pisa airport office, turned in the keys, and left. Done and done!

As a side note, when we reserved the car, we pulled up the US and Italian versions of the site simultaneously to see if the translations for each step matched up. Everything did, so it was a very easy process over all.

Hope that helps! I'll put this info in my upcoming trip report, as well...

Thanks!
Heather.

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&lt;&lt;How does citizenship factor in here? I've never been asked for passport or any other proof of citizenship when renting a car.&gt;&gt;


When I booked a car for Copenhagen for August, the AutoEurope website said the rate was not valid for Danish citizens. I hope they don't ask to see passport and as well as driving licence, since one of us is a Danish citizen (but not resident).

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Regarding their not asking to see a passport, I'd call that flirting with danger. While you may not need to prove that you qualify for the contract, I'd be worried that in the event of wrecking the car, they would find out that I had not met the terms of the contract and all insurance would become invalid -- and perhaps they would charge or fine for falsely contracting the rental. Maybe that's just me. Sounds as dangerous as driving without a driver's license or insurance. If you don't get caught -- what's the big deal?

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NeoPatrick --

If you see my response (just a few ahead of yours), I successfully booked through the Italian version of the site and we were asked to show our passports. Everything went smoothly.

Has anyone mentioned that there seems to be a different cancellation policy on the French and UK websites? At least when I did the comparison on a rental we will use during our next trip, a 48 hour cancellation was required on these websites, and this is not the case on the US site.

Booking on the French site, I have made changes (by calling the toll free number to the call center in Dusseldorf) as little as 2 hours before I was planning to pick up the car -- and they straightened everything out within 20 minutes. I made a mistake on the date and saw that my voucher was for the next day. Of course if no cars had been available, I would have been in trouble.