Renting a car from Frankfurt
 

Hello. I am looking to rent a car from Frankfurt in 2 weeks. The weekly rates all look pretty high for a larger car. Need it to fit 5. I have checked the american companies, europcar, sixt, autoeurope and waiting from gemut. All the rates are about the same for the size of car i need. I am not using any codes for these searches. All the ones I have found are very small (10% or 25 off). Need something bigger. Any ideas or suggestions? Thank you very much!!

>Need something bigger. Any ideas or suggestions?

Try looking at various national sites of AutoEurope - German, british, spanish sites etc. They have quite a variation of rates depending via which national office you book (not that it makes the slightest difference for you whether the request was routed via Brussels, Berlin or Madrid or wherever else)

Otherwise, large cars are not in much demand and therefore infrequent and pricy - that's the way it is.

thank you for your reply. I have tried autoeurope and on your recommendation
I also tried other countries' sites. No discount i can see. I am looking for a roomy 5 seater but not a van, suv, etc. Anything that fits 3 adults and 2 children and is not categorized as compact or economy. I noticed that the prices did not go down for the smaller cars either. It seems like no coupons work. Maybe I am using old codes. Any idea where I can find something recent to lower the price? I prefer to not pay standard prices. Thanks!!

Keep in mind, if you need to seat 5 people, you will also need room for 5 people's luggage.

The weekly rates are high for larger vehicles. You may just have to live with it. The alternative we explored is renting 2 small vehicles. You just have to calculate the added expense for fuel to figure out whether or not it is worth it.

You can try rentalcodes.com but I doubt there will be any large discounts.

>I noticed that the prices did not go down for the smaller cars either. It seems like no coupons work.

These coupons seem to be a very American thing - I have never heard of things like this (at least freely available) in Germany.

If you are a member of Costco, you can sometimes find discounts on weekly rates in Germany. Sometimes when you are renting a larger car, they will add the insurance rates into the rates - thus the higher prices. I rented a Midsize Mercedes in Stuttgart for about 65 Euro a day (9 days). It came with a GPS system.

Are you looking at renting a car right from the airport? You can likely find cheaper rates by reserving the car from a downtown location.

Are you looking for an automatic?

thanks all. I have come to realize that the only low priced cars are small ones and that the slightly bigger cars are more or less the same price across different companies..for the dates and cities I am choosing. That's the scenario here in the states, but it's usually the SUV and luxury cars not intermediate sized. The good thing is that for less than $20 more for the week, I am renting an automatic Mercedes instead of the cheapest manual intermediate car!

In my case, National is the cheapest. They are partners with Europcar. I tried the same transaction with Europcar and the charges were higher with them.

thanks again for the advice.