Europcar and Hertz have never charged me one way fees to or from Avignon, Strasbourg, Montpellier, Nancy, Paris, Lille, Metz... or even Luxembourg.

Make sure that breaking up your rentals into 2 accomplishes what you want; some credit cards don't allow this to get around their 31 day limit. You'd have to either have a day or more between them to break them up, or use 2 different cards.

I anticipate about $100 in extra charges for each rental.

Kerouac,

Last year I tried to avoid the RR station fee by specifying a city agency. That would have been Herz and there was a one way charge which would have been more than the RR station pick-up charge.

I am very impressed with the services of Economy Car Rentals, they are the best value for money car hire. I have used them when i last visited Paris. I had to use their damage insurance after slightly damaging the hire car. I paid the excess and then claimed this back from Economy car rentals which they fully refunded.

In my experience, Economy Car Rentals has always been more expensive in France than Kemwel/Autoeurope if using their "basic" rate, and especially for one way rentals. There is no alternative to comparing the prices on-line.

JP,

I checked; it does.

I will continue to say that if you use the <b>French</b> site of the rental companies, you will not be surprised with station or airport charges at the end. It is illegal to "hide" charges in France.

The various fees and taxes that one can pay when booking through Autoeurope are not really hidden. They are clearly explained on the voucher given to each customer.

Problems arrive because all too many do not read the voucher and have expectations were are simply unrealistic.

Autoeurope straightened out the problem, and I got my $30 coupon. All told I am paying $643 for car rentals (Twingo or equivalent) lasting from Jun 2 to July 10, with my VISA card carrying the CDW with no deductible. The total coat after the added road tax and RR station fee will probably be closer to $800+.

Lately Avis have been giving good deals in Europe, especial car rentals in France and Italy.

Many car hir companies like Budget, Hertz etc, in Europe block money from your credit card as an extra guarantee even though you pay for excess insurance. So be careful if you have a strict budget and can't transfer money from another account whilst on holiday. Nowadays we use a credit card just for car hire, and put in cost of car hire plus make allowance for excess insurance, which you have to pay at office at time of booking, so that we would know if they are blocking extra money for us from our credit card. Of course, that blocked money would be dropped if everything is fine, and no accident happened during trip, but it can get you short of money during the holiday, especially because on one holiday a car hire company blocked over a thousand euros for us from our credit card. Avis is one of the very few companies that never blocked money for us, at least till our last holiday in December. Of course we always paid for excess daily insurance.

Make this clear at any car hire booking office.

Actually, I hit a payment card ceiling once because of that. I had rented three cars cars from Europcar in the same month, and the deductible guarantee stayed in place. When my card started being rejected when I tried to use it in shops, I called the bank, and they explained what had happened -- and they bumped up my credit another 1000€ to compensate until the other guarantees expired.

I always have two cards anyway just in case there is a problem with one of them far from home.

I have had good luck with www.economycarrentals.com as well. The only place I will not use them is in the South of Portugal. I have also had good luck with rentalcars.com Autoeurope and Kemwel always seem to be more spendy, but that could just be a function of where I was renting.

I do recommend going for cars that have no excess.