March 2017 – Pangean.org

Renting a car in Europe is not much different than renting one in North America. You will still face the hard sell on insurance at the counter, the quandary of whether to pre-pay for the fuel or spend your own time hunting down a fuel station to bring it back full, and of course the fact that the vehicle you get is almost never the one you selected. Rather, it seems it is always one of the “Or Similar” members of the same class.

There are, however, a fewcomplicating factors that make renting a car in Europe more of a Pangean adventure. For one, you are almost invariably exhausted from a long flight, often through the night. You are then faced with unfamiliar accents, signage, and foreign languages. For another, most European rental agencies that this Pangean has dealt with also have a fixation with insurance and deposits. I suppose it is understandable since they are handing out keys to vehicles worth thousands of Euros to complete strangers. The other complication is that the options and rental policies can vary from country to country, even when you are using the same agency or outlet.
Continue reading “European Car Rental Issues – Part 1 – Insurance”

In Part 1 (see: http://pangean.org/european-car-rental-issues/ ) we went through some of the insurance considerations that apply to car rentals in Europe. As mentioned in that post, there are some differences between renting a car in Europe and renting one in North America. Foremost among those is the issue of holds and deposits.

This Pangean has never been asked for a deposit or a hold while renting a car in North America. It could just be luck or the location or the timing, but we’ve never been asked for an extra-ordinary payment to secure a deductible or the cost of the vehicle. We’ve rented cars in Hawaii, Nevada, California, and Arizona and in none of those instances has the rental agency imposed a hold or deposit requirement for anything more than an amount to cover incidentals. However, the experience in Europe, especially during the several rentals we had booked for our October 2016 trip, was very different. Although the policies varied from country to country and even from agency to agency, all required some form of security. Continue reading “European Car Rental Issues – Part 2 – Holds and Deposits”