I just thought I would pass this along in case it might be useful to others who plan to rent a car in Europe.

I'm renting a car in France for eleven days this summer and have always used Kemwel as my agent. So, when I was planning this segment of my trip I, by default, went to the Kemwel site and got a price of $967 for an economy (Peugot 208) car. That price stunned me a little from what I had paid in the past and a subsequent search showed the same car through another agency at $290. Also, the Kemwel offer was limited mileage. One obvious difference was the Kemwel site did not offer the option for not buying insurance which the other sites did.

Since Kemwel offers a price matching guarantee I gave them a call, and they quoted me $408 which excluded the insurance. When I demurred, the agent asked me the price I was seeing on line and when I told him, he dropped the price to $232 and included gps and unlimited mileage.

So, why haggle with Kemwel? To be honest this is the first experience I have had where I've had to make a call to negotiate and I also don't recall, in past bookings, not being able to build my quote (i.e., excluding the CDW) online. But this board and others is replete with stories of after the fact bad experiences with car renting agencies and having Kemwel stand between me and the agency is a comfort, so the extra effort was worth it to me.

You tagged United Kingdom which starting from today no longer wants to be in Europe.

So book something French when in France. It is quite normal that we keep the best prices for us.

From now on it is going to be Europe first, Europe first.

Funny Wo,

My mistake. The quote was for France.

"You tagged United Kingdom which starting from today no longer wants to be in Europe."

No, the UK doesn't want to be in the EU, we will always be geographically in Europe.