MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
Has anyone recently hired a car from the swiss side of geneva airport and driven into france?
Any issues?
There were lots of stories in the press in the summer about a recent EU rule change meaning that swiss hire cars could not be driven into france unless being driven to the hirers place of residence.
I was wondering what the latest situation is, the car hire websites are at best vague about it.
Hiring a car from the french side is a fair bit more expensive than using the swiss side.
I can only vouch for Europcar, but we have had no problems with them even since the EU kerfuffle. I gather Europcar have French registered vehicles on the Swiss side.
This is the response I got from them when I queried the situation in May 2016
Dear Customer,Thank you for your email.
Cross border to France is allowed and free of charge you just have to inform pick up station
Best regards,
Jeremy Pomponne
Europcar International Reservation
Quality to Customer
http://www.europcar.com
We hired a car from the Geneva side just before Christmas and drove it to Tignes in France. I tried to email Dollar prior to travelling regarding this and they never got back to me. Had no problems at all when we were out there, and the Swiss car came with winter tyres and a vignette for the motorway as standard (was a smidge more expensive than hiring via the French side though, and the queues at the pick up counter were longer).
No need to worry, last summer Avis gave us a German-registered car with the Swiss vignette. What happened was, I think, the French Customs putting the frighteners on French people who were buying cars in Switzerland them bringing them into France, presumably avoiding import duty. It certainly put the frighteners on everybody.
Friend of mine in the summer hired a car from the Swiss side to drive in France. Collected the car and was given an Italian registered car.
Normally they just don't have a swiss vignette fitted but are usually fine to drive... they normally also don't have snow tyres fitted or chains in the boot so shit on the alpine roads if you're going to a ski resort.
If you're heading to Morzine you can miss the motorway by driving through the city and along the lake.
Collected one (Alamo) yesterday from Geneva , Swiss side, no issues. I did ask the lady at the desk, she kind of laughed at me, in a nice way, and said it was no problem.
It has snow tyres also.
Thanks all, will go ahead and hire from Swiss side