I called Autoeurope for the price of a Rental Car from Munich to Zurich for 10 days. They quoted me a price of around $650 of which included $80 for drop off charges for a VW Polo with diesel.

I thought that was a little high, so I started to shop around -- called Gemut.com and got a quote for the same vehicle, including drop off charge, for $450.

OK, so this is a no-brainer.

I received thru e-mail the contract from Gemut, and guess what? The car rental was thru Autoeurope. It was their contract and their toll free number to call if there are any disputes. The rental car was thru Avis.

What gives, not that I'm complaining?

Anybody heard of this -- an agent for an agent? Makes one wonder where to go to get the best price.

The car shouldn't cost more than 20-25€ per day but only including 100km/day fully insured. That's what I'd pay (low cost rental companies in Munich). $450 including drop-off charge in Zurich seems reasonable. However, you'll get the best price locally at the low-cost spin-offs of the big rental companies.

Who knows the real reason for any of it. I recently reserved a car through AutoEurope only to find out I could get a better car and at a cheaper rate through their own sister company Kemwell and from the same agency..and it was the Autoeurope person who told me about it!

Budman, I too recently went through gemut.com and received a quote for $510.00 (Avis) for 15 days picking up in Frankfurt and returning in Frankfurt (manual, VW Passat). I think Andrew Bestor with Gemut is able to get better deals than if we were to go directly through autoeurope.

Avis does require full payment up front. Our trip isn't until the end of june so we are holding out a bit until we finalize our plans.

I also used Gemut.com for air fare and they were able to give me the best quotes (still pretty high IMO .. but that seems to be the going rate at this time of year for summer travel).