Europe One Way Car Rental - Barcelona to Nice

[Hans]

Hi all,

I am taking a road trip across the Med with my family and am planning on hiring a small/medium car in late October in Barcelona and dropping it off in Nice (via Andorra) 10 days later.

Unfortunately a lot of the websites I have been on charge exorbitant relocation feels for the car - some as high as 200% of the car hire! The base rate for a car is around $400 and the relocation fee is up to around $800.

Has anyone cracked this? What websites do you recommend?

Thanks

 

[trooper]

I think you are going to struggle to fine "reasonable" one way fees... I looked at this a while back (ended up flying) but the usual advice I found was:

1. If possible do two rentals - from Pickup to a drop off point close to the border - make your way by other means (train?) to a pickup point as close as possible on the other side of the border....and on to the destination. (Not sure there are any suitable options on your route though...)
2. Look carefully at pick up and drop off options.. airport/downtown etc to see if any combination produces a reduced one way fee.

Thats all i was able to find.... and neither worked for me....

 

[AisleSeat]

Have you looked at Renault EuroDrive? Car Lease Europe, Renault Eurodrive, Car Hire Europe, Car Rental Europe

 

[trooper]

I think you'll find that's available only for bookings of 21 days and longer... unfortunately. OP said 10 days?

 

[dajop]

Have you looked at hiring in Perpignan, France and returning to Nice? It is only 80 minutes via TGV/AVE from Barcelona Sants station. Not sure if the high fee you are seeing relates to the distance you are relocating or that you are relocating across borders, or both. Also you need to look at fine print to see if there are any daily or flat fee cross border charges in addition to the relocation fee.

 

[Katie]

I didn't find a better way to deal with it for our car hire last year (picked up in Amsterdam, dropped off in Paris).

When I started to think of the drop off fee in terms it waiving my need to travel back to Amsterdam (the whole family, so three tickets to AMS), it didn't feel as much of a gouge.

 

[Ausbt]

I've previously had a negative experience with rentalcars.com.au in France. In retrospect it may have been a problem with Hertz and not rentalcars as such. However I can now report a good experience in the UK pre-booking with rentalcars.com.au , including a very reasonable one-way charge. For AUD$450 all-in, they handed me an ST-line manual Ford Focus at LHR and let me drive it 1,100 kms over 8 days ending up in Edinburgh. I think the one-way charge was as low as AUD$75. Anyway, that's a pretty cheap rate IMHO.

I think you should get the train from Barcelona to Toulouse and then pick up the car, probably much cheaper.