How to hack rental cars in Europe?

[clubsoda]

Hi everyone,

I am planning a three-week trip in Europe in March 2019. We are flying into Switzerland and plan to visit Italy, France, and Germany and perhaps more. We need to rent a car to take to the mountains.

I do not want to burn through all of the Alaska or Delta points. I may have some Amex points building up over the rest of 2018 that could be redeemed for a rental car.

I have done month-long trips in other states within the U.S. and hacked it moderately by turning in my rental car every 10 days for a different one! But, I've never rented a car in Europe and so I am utterly clueless about it.

All suggestions are welcome.

 

[gocurrycracker]

Sounds like a great trip.

I've always paid cash for the rental cars because point valuation was never so good; using the Alaska/Delta points for flights will often get better $/pt.

Last year in Europe we rented 5 or 6 cars with fairly good daily rates. The key was looking at 1-way fees and cross-country fees. For example, driving from Austria to Italy caused the price of the rental car to triple, so we returned car1 in Innsbruck, took the train to Bolzano, and then picked up car2.

[clubsoda]

Thank you for the warning! We are admittedly going to some of the most expensive places, so we want to avoid surprises.

Has anyone here used Sixt for renting cars in Europe?

P.s. Great news piece.

[gocurrycracker]

I?ve rented from Sixt on multiple occasions. I give them a 6 out of 10, which is the highest I would rate any car rental company (they all have issues.)

[gotmilklol]

If you haven't already, I would use https://www.autoslash.com/. Great website to compare quotes in addition to Costco.

Also if you haven't used your CSR (Chase Sapphire Reserve) credit for the year, this would come in handy to use for it as well. I think they give premium memberships to the well-known car rental companies so you can get free days, guaranteed reservation, or premium cars compared to regular members (although I'm not sure how popular they are in Europe).

[jm21]

I?ve rented from Sixt on multiple occasions. I give them a 6 out of 10, which is the highest I would rate any car rental company (they all have issues.)

We have lived in the EU for 2 years now (Germany) and have tried out our fair share or rental car companies. After much heartache from other companies, we've found that Sixt has always given us the best experience. It does cost a bit more than something discount (e.g. Buchbinder) but from what we've found - it's worth it.

[FamVestor]

I'd recommend a discount broker we used, Kemwel, this was back in 2015.

For the rental car, we paid $256.52 for the nine days that we had it. We did have to pay an unfortunate but unavoidable $350 fee for driving it one way from Switzerland to Austria. We got a great deal using a discount broker, Kemwel. They booked us through Europcar at a cheaper price than if we went directly to Europcar, which would have cost us over $400. I highly recommend searching for these discount brokers (we did the same thing during our honeymoon trip to Hawaii and saved about 40% there as well).