car seats in rental cars - do you take your own?

[Tutter]

renting a car from avis in france next month and have asked for a seat to be fitted. a friend looked horrified and told i must take my own. surely a reputable firm like avis wouldn't fit a damaged one though, would they?

ds will be 15mo - his own seat is mahoosive.

We're taking our own to France as i've heard horror stories about car rental ones. Also rental companies tend not to guarantee availability because for example, a family may have decided to extend their holiday, thus keeping the seat you'd ordered.

oh shit, really? i just can't imagine lugging his seat around with us. i'm off to email avis...

unapologetic BUMP for evening crowd

We took one with us this year to Portugal for dd (who is 3.5).However, as she is older it is more of a booster seat, and it takes apart so we put it in a suitcase (dd had own luggage allowance)
Also, it cost £40 - not much more than the cost of child seat hire!
This may not seem relevant, as dd is older than your ds, but the main reason we took our own was because last May we went to spain and the proper car seat we hired turned out to be a bit of blue foam
We spent 45 mins in a dusty airport carpark while dh sorted it out Grr!

hi, we hired two boosters and a car seat for dd whos two recently in majorca and they where fine had no problems. ( they had a big room full of car seats and we just picked our own. They cost 2 euros a day.

We hired car seats last year. They were pretty good quality but beware, we had to fit them ourselves and there were no instructions! Luckily I've fitted loads of seats and just scouted about til I found one I could put in.

Something I haven't looked into but a friend warned me about - check the insurance of the hire cars - I'm sure she said something about no liability if they don't supply the car seat? (Though I think I'd trust my seat more than one I had never seen and might not even know how to fit properly)

I always take my own to Spain due to a nightmare we had when DS was 10 months. None of the seats offered were suitable for his age/weight even though I had checked with them that they would have one. Also when I told them I wasn't happy with the seats they were spectacularly not bothered - the babies travel on mopeds there after all. They just didn't seem to get it.

no experience with France - but we hired one when we came to Aus for 3 weeks. It was fitted and ready for us to go. They were so accommodating - although dd1 was of an age to sit up - she has sn adn so was not sitting etc and when I told them they just made sure they had a rear facing one and it was fine.

Where are you flying to ? tbh we've found they can vary in standard. We've had ok in Majorca, variable in UK, usually good in Switzerland but just hired from Hertz in Geneva, and they were of the flimsiest style possible. dd is about 13kg and we were supplied with a Kiddy booster seat for 9kg plus which used the adult belt, same as for ds who is about 22kg. tbh it was fine for her as she's 4, but would not be so good for a toddler who may need to sleep and might try to escape. Unusually we had the instruction booklet to fit/adjust them supplied but none have fitted them for us, it is down to the hirer. We could see others with harnesses behind a screen but they were all haphazardly piled up and we felt likely to be no safer.