Continental motorhome rental

[candapack]

We are caravanners thinking about switching to a motorhome. You've given us lots of good advice so far. We're at the stage of "trying before buying", and wonder if you could help with info on renting on the Continent. Recommendations, companies to avoid, your experiences etc.

Look forward to hearing from you.

 

[Brian Kirby]

Cheapest, I believe, in Germany. Hertz and Blu Rent have quite large availability also in France and Italy. We had more or less decided what we wanted to buy (Burstner) before we hired (in 2004) so hired from the prospective seller in Calais, from whom we eventually bought.

 

The greatest pitfall, which seems to be common to all hirings, is that the hire insurance is unlikely to cover damage to the roof area or to the underside of the vehicle. This is because of the attrition in these areas from inexperienced drivers. Either from driving under overhanging tree branches or snagging corners of buildings etc (mainly with Lutons), or from pulling off the road into a concealed ditch, or onto a concealed tree stump.

 

If you mentally note these potential hazards, and always travel with a digital camera handy, you should have no greater problems than with any other vehicle.

 

Your hire will, of course, be LHD, so if you are reasonably familiar with driving on the right and with LHD, your main learning curve will be with the size of the vehicle. If you have little experience of driving on the right, and have never before tried LHD, I'd suggest you may be taking too many leaps into the dark at once! After all, you don't want this to become a test of your resistance to nervous breakdown! :-)

[AliB]

I found it strange that when hiring a car in France earlier this year the insurance did not cover the underside of the vehicle. Just had to make sure I did not drive over any IEDs.

[lennyhb]

We hired a couple of times in Germany before buying both times from the Hymer dealer in Cologne.

Found out the hard way when you hire a van that's what you get a van, had to do a quick shop for saucepan, frying pan, mugs etc. also can't get full collision damage waver had to leave deposit of 1000€ luckily that was done with a credit card swipe.

 

Our first experience was excellent the second time not so good they had hired a new guy to handle the hires. Picking up the van was a good experience as they had sold the van we booked and upgraded us but on returning the the van the guy was real a a**e, first complained about us being late back after we had waited nearly an hour for him, complained the van was dirty and was going to deduct some of our deposit.

Dirty = 3 blades of grass in the garage and a few grains of coffee in one of the cupboards. After some very heated words from me he backed down.

 

Anyway that was a few years ago 2006 & 2007, overall the experience was good Hymer only allow dealers to hire out vans under 2 years old usually they are the current model year they are new in April and they sell them off in September both the vans we had, had less than a 1000km on the clock. You book via the Hymer site prices set by Hymer.

 

Hymer.com