Taking hire car across European borders

Tractorboydoesmoney

Good evening,
brand new member, looking for some advice and experience.  Been looking at hiring a car from Memmingen airport, which is in the south of Germany.  Then driving into Austria, where we will stay for 9 days before returning to memmingen to fly home.  We are not traveling until August.  It seems that it needs permission to travel across the border from the hire car company, plus there will be additional costs.  I can’t quite seem to tie what those are down.  I have seen 150 euros for the term of the hire, no matter how long.  And I swore I saw 5 euros per day on a site but can’t seem to find that now.  Anybody got experience of taking a hire car across European borders, and able to offer advice?
thanks

eskbanker

Costs will be set by the individual rental companies, rather than a one-size-fits-all standardised figure - who are you planning to hire from?

daveyjp

European comparison is probably too wide as insurance isn't agreed on an EU wide basis and each hire company will have different policies.

I have driven from Portugal into Spain, there were no extra charges for doing so, the only downside was the roadside assirstance couldn't be used in Spain,

michaels

I often fly into Italy for France and it is a real pain. Once I arrived at the counter to find the 'nominal charge' was 25 euros a day on top of what I had already paid which made it cheaper to cancel and rebook with another supplier who did not charge.

There is normally some sort of info on the booking website but it may be sketchy like the nominal charge above or even wrong (this year the booking site said not allowed but I knew with that company it was actually free). You can sometimes find more info on the rental company as opposed to broker foreign country website.

jbrassy

Normally when booking the car it will say in the T&Cs whether you are able to take it across borders and into which countries. In continental Europe, they normally list what countries it's OK to take the car into without additional charges. I think you're typically not allowed to drive a rental car from the EU in Switzerland (and vice versa), but that doesn't sound like a problem for you.

Perhaps the best thing is to book a rental car with free cancellation and ring the car hire company to check where you can drive it?

jimi_man

I regularly pick a car up in Toulouse, France and drive it into Spain. As stated a lot depends on the company. The big names - Avis etc, have never been a problem but if you go for the smaller (potentially cheaper) ones then you might run into difficulty.