Thanks in advance.
We have family visiting over Christmas arriving at Basel Euroairport and we will need a car. When I search for a car rental in Switzerland from Basel airport the prices are significantly higher than searching in France from Mulhouse Airport. I have taken into account that I will have additional charges by adding on the snow chains and perhaps needing the highway sticker but it still works out way cheaper. Can anyone see any problem I may encounter if I use the French booking.
My sister and her family would always rent from the French side at Geneva whilst holidaying in Les Diablerets; they never once had an issue.
You can ask for a car with a vignette as there are lots.
They are visiting and non Swiss resident so no problem hiring in France, and popping over I don't think. Just make sure there is a vignette on the car, it has decent winter tyres and if you are planing to head to the mountains in it that it has snow chains JIC. I have heard that the cars on the French side don't necessarily have this kit, so something to bear in mind. I just did a quick google with rentalcars.com and the diff' between Mulhouse and Basel on a Corsa for a 5 day rental was only CHF 49.
Do you or anyone else who's resident in CH plan on driving it?
Tom
I thought this had been covered ac ouple of times in the past, and it doesn't matter for short term rentals.
Short term is up to three days.
Tom
Have you tried priceline? I find the rental prices are MUCH cheaper via them. My current car is through them for about 80 euros a week.
The rental will be for 1 week and we will have 2 drivers - husband and brother in law, so one swiss resident and one visitor. Even hiring the baby seat seems cheaper on the French side. Seems it will all be fine, but I'll be sure to check out Priceline first, I was using rentalcars.com
Thanks for the replies.
I wouldn't use an unknown car seat. Is it possible they can bring their own or buy one? Would be safer
Can one not trust the car seats from rental companies? They have 3 sizes from newborn to 5 or 6 year olds. Need input on this please...
impossible to know if they have been mishandled, old, installed correct.
Car seats are free to fly with. a booster would be OK for a large 6 year old on short trip. A baby I would be most worried about.
I have travelled with ours international many times. I put them in a well padded box
So only the visitor could drive then.
It's three days if the rental period began more than five days before entering Switzerland or eight days from the beginning of the rental period, i.e. a rental of one week is no problem.
Who will be using the credit card? Because saying you have a swiss drivers license will push the rates back up. When I went to California, a state part of the country I am from, I went with someone that has a Swiss driver's license. We rented thru Alamo, and she had to use her credit card. It boosted the quoted online rate up almost 400 dollars when we went to pick up. Even when I tried to change it to all my info, she would drive the car as well.
As per the vignette, there is no guarantee at all they will have ones they can put on the car for you. Just because it is on the border, does not mean the cars are always the same ones in stock. They move cars around between agencies all the time. I rent a lot of cars in different countries. In the last year from the Basel airport, French side atleast a dozen times, not once did they have a vignette for me. I have an extra one I can sell to you for a discount if you are interested.
That upcharge due to having a Swiss driver's license is only to do with pure greed. What you can do is, have one person pickup, that is non Swiss, then say it might be possible there will be a 2nd driver and what to do? They will tell you that you can make a copy of their passport and driver's license, and scan and email it them from the date you plan on them driving. You ask at that point how much will an extra driver cost, and get them to put it into writing, as they are just going to assume the 2nd driver is the same nationality as the 1st driver. It's like 7 euros or something a day thru Europcar as I remember. Then however longer, you do that. That way you can control how much you are going to pay.
I do it often. We pickup a car, then 3 or 4 days later, send the scan, and they charge like it was normal. Not putting you in stress at the point of pickup with whatever crazy upcharges they want, because they know you can't turn around and leave and look for a better deal.
It can happen, but it doesn't have to and even if the rate for a Swiss renter is somewhat higher it may still be considerably less expensive than renting in Switzerland.
But it's certainly a good idea to check online beforehand if Swiss residence returns different rates.
I don't know if that was the case there but what I've often seen in the US was that the rates for tourists included all kinds of additional insurance while the rates for locals/US residents were just for the rental with minimum liability insurance but nothing else.
AFAIK swiss residents MUST NOT drive cars with foreign plates within CH.
What's more, rentals often are not allowed to go abroad, which would mean disallowed to enter CH for a Mulhouse rent.
Rentals are allowed to go abroad...each rental agency is different, total none sense.
As far as you know, show a link to what you are talking about? I have driven non Swiss plated cars over the border, and been controlled for many reasons, and have never been told anything like that. Maybe you are right, but it's not been my actual experience.
As a general rule that's correct, but there are exceptions for rental cars. See post #14 above .
There are often restrictions to drive a rental car into countries in Eastern/Southeastern Europe and sometimes Italy or Southern France for expensive cars. But I've yet to see a rental contract for tourists that doesn't allow bringing a rental car from a neighboring country into Switzerland.
Should be no problems, but make sure about the tyres and the chains, I've had probems there in the past even from Geneva airport so it's worth checking with this place in Mulhouse. They should also be able to tell you which exit to take so that you don't have to enter Switzerland on the autoroute. ;-)