European Car Hire

[QueenoftheSarf]

In the summer we'd like to take the Eurostar over to France and then hire a car to travel around Europe a bit - to Belgium, Holland and Germany and then back to France. Someone has told me that it makes the car hire really expensive if you travel into different countries. Has anyone any experience of doing this and is it true?

Yes, that's correct. Normally car hire companies forbid you to take a hire car over the border without specific permission.

Why can't you take your own car instead of Eurostar and hire?

Hi op. We did this a few times. Technically, car rental companies don't allow you to take cars across borders for insurance purposes. However, you can check with them prior to booking and it is usually possible. We told our car hire company we will be taking our rental from USA to Canada and there were no problems. We also rented a car in a non EU country and drove it to an EU country. For this we had to pay around 40 eur additional insurance, and were provided with additional paperwork to show at the border.

As you are going to be within the EU, it might be different but I would check with the car rental company as they are often flexible. You may have more luck with a big global retal agency rather than a small local one.

Thank for the advice. I'll have to ring a selection of hire companies and see what they say.

We have considered taking our own car, and my DH is happy to do this, but my feeling is that having a right hand drive car in Europe would be safer and easier than trying to negotiate around the roads with our own car, seeing as we will be doing a lot of driving. If the cost proves to be prohibitive though we might end up having to take our own.

Good point re driving on the other side!

I always use carhire3000.com for my rentals. They always give very good rates and the car is always from a big company such as Avis or Hertz. They often quoted us a cheaper price than the agency itself.