All I can tell you about car rentals in France is that some companies will require you to be at least 23, others 25, and that diesels are common. The toll highways are sweet, as they are 3 lanes of emptiness that you can speed on like crazy, but the twisty and turny “route nationales” (free highways, lower speed limits) can also be fun, but are busier – great way to see the landscape and towns though. I think I paid around $300 for a weekend rental a few years back. My business is car insurance quotes.

[note: spam link removed by Don]

Whisky, it depends how you define “full coverage.” Check out the insurance included with your credit card. I recently did, and was pleasantly surprised by how much coverage mine includes — but, your mileage may vary depending on the specific benefits of your card with your bank.

I believe Easycar includes “full coverage” — you might check out Easycar.com to see what they include, and if their rentals might work for you.

I usually buy the full insurance, even though it’s probably a waste. The biggest issue for me is “what happens until all the insurance issues are worked out.” If you injure a bicyclist? If you buy the full insurance you have proof of it in the car with you. Is the gen d’armes going to believe your credit card is going to cover everything? If you seriously damage the rental car is the rental car company going to tie up a huge amount of your available credit balance until they get paid?

Insurance is usually much cheaper for a rental that’s short term and limited to one country.

Hey everyone,
I did this rental in September of 2009, my credit card had pretty good coverage and I also had a package travel insurance policy that had rental car coverage as well.

Yeah, looks like Bendjamin dug up this post to spam us.

Thanks for the update on this.

Did you book a package and take the insurance that the agency offered? Or… how did you find your insurance? (Insuremytrip.com?) Just thinking this could be helpful for others in similar situations.

Don, I bought a package travel insurance policy online from CSA Travel Protection.
http://www.csatravel…
It included $25,000.00 in rental car insurance for loss, theft, damage. Along with medical, Air flight A D D, lost luggage, trip interruption, and trip cancellation if I were deathly ill before the trip. I think it was about $40.00 US. The rental car company was required by law to include the liability insurance in the rental cost. My credit card also provided insurance with a $250.00 deductible for making the reservation with my card. So I felt I was well covered without buying it from the rental agency.

Thanks for that explanation. It will probably help others searching here with a similar situation.

Top post. I look forward to reading more. Cheers.

I just rented a car in Spain with a provider called Atlas that I found with Bookingbuddy.co.uk. It supposedly includes CDW, but not tyres or glass. I put it on my company Visa which includes some coverage ($200 deductible) so theoritically I think the most out of my own pocket could possibly be $200. It seemed like most of the providers from BookingBuddy.co.uk had some major insurance included—but that could be specific to my pickup city (BCN) and dates, so I can’t guarantee what they’ll offer in other situations.