Planning Limoges airport car hire booking - is "partial prepayment" pretext to overcharge?

AspiringPensioner

Hi forumites

We're attending a wedding in France this summer (Aug Bank Hol weekend) and unfortunately hiring a car seems to be necessary - we've had a few bad experiences with some car hire companies in the past but needs must! We need to fly INTO Limoges and out of Bordeaux, and I've been looking at various rental options through Kayak.

The two most economical options shown below are around £100-£120 for the 48 hours, including the one-way drop off. Which is all fine and reasonable, but obvs I know they will try to pressure me to take out additional insurance. I plan to buy a standalone excess cover policy as recommended on MSE.

My question is around the additional factors/implications of security deposit amount and payment method (pay now vs partial prepayment)

Within the Kayak search listings:

• The Citroen C4 is marked as both "Car Rental 8" and Enterprise
• The Peugeot 208 is marked as both "DiscoverCars.com" and Alamo
• When you click on "more info" the Citroen has a security deposit of £216, whereas the Peugeot has a security deposit of £1,725!
• This massive differential would normally lead me to book the Citroen as we're not really bothered about the make/model EXCEPT for this additional factor:
• The Peugeot option says Pay Now: Make full payment at the time of booking to confirm your reservation and lock in the current rate.
• The Citroen listing says Partial prepayment Pay a part of the total cost now to secure your booking. The remaining balance will be due at pick-up.

While the breakdown shows that "remaining balance" amount to be 1p (!!). Does this "partial prepayment" option indicate a trick which opens the door to them levying whatever additional charge they might decide, at the desk? See screen shot below from the "view deal" page. I don't like that "this is what we estimate" bit…

When I select only "Pay Now" in the payment type filter, the cost for the same Citroen model goes up from £103 to £153. I could stick with the Renault but as I say, that has a massive security deposit ( I do have ample headroom in my credit card limit but it is offputting seeing such a massive amount).

I also noticed in small print the "opening hours" being 2-6pm only (!). Our flight is due in around noon. On doing a search about Limoges Airport car hire, the reviews were all absolutely dreadful, but we don't seem to have a lot of choice.

JGB1955

Have you tried Zest (brokers)?

flaneurs_lobster

Limoges airport gets 4 flights a day so it's not too surprising that the facilities are not 24/7.

The Tripadvisor pages that mention car hire talk about using offices in Limoges itself but that's going to mean a taxi, and the complication of dropping at Bordeaux on the return is adding cost.