I've been tracking prices from AutoEurope and Kemwel for our summer trip to France. I just noticed while reading through the terms and conditions on a couple that they require you have held a drivers license for at least 3 years. I have had one since I was 16 of course but got curious and pulled mine out. It was issued June 2009; only 2 years by the time we go on our trip. Is this a concern? Do they really base this on when your license was last issued even though it was a renewal (I do realize this is a different country and they may not know about our renewal policies)? I'm only having a little freak out that we will have to change the entire scope of our trip!

Thanks for any assistance.

You are worried about nothing. I'm sure licenses get "renewed" everywhere, meaning almost nobody would be able to rent a car.

~Liz

Of course they're not talking about when the license was renewed. Some people have to renew their licenses every year.

If you're under 21 or 25 I would call AutoEurope and ask if there are any age restrictions and do reveal the country you'll be driving in so they can give you exact information.

Much older than 25 so no issues there.

My license says Expires 6-13-2014, Issued 6-4-2009 then birthdate. Doesn't say anything about a renewal and doesn't have the first issue date anywhere so that was why I am worried.

I've rented in Italy and France and never had a problem with this. However, it was a problem for someone who discussed it on Slow Trav recently. You may want to read through the thread-

<<Hi there, we just returned from three fabulous weeks in France and wanted to post a problem we had with Europecar. In Canada drivers licenses are renewed every 5 years and most provinces do not put on there the year you started driving. My husband renewed his license in April this year. Europecar flat out refused to rent him a car because he couldn't prove he'd been driving for a year. We of course went into panic mode as we had 22 days of vacation greatly depending on a car. We tried all kinds of convincing, trying to have them look up our old rental with them to no avail. Finally they let us use the phone to phone our insurance company in British Columbia, we waited for about 2 1/2 hours for them to open and they e:mailed confirmation of Bernie's 40 year driving record.>>


http://slowtalk.com/groupee/forums/a...1#915006941001

hi trv,

>Is this a concern? <

NO. On my last trip I had a license that had been renewed less than 1 year earlier.

Enjoy your visit.