One-way car hire between Ireland and France

IvyTheTerrible

Does anyone know of a company that will allow me to hire a car in Ireland and drive it to France (a one-way move)?

Thanks in advance

Alun

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

Does anyone know of a company that will allow me to hire a car in Ireland and drive it to France (a one-way move)?

Highly unlikely. They'd have to get someone else to drive it all the way back again (think LHD vs. RHD) including ferry costs etc. so you'd end up paying for a two-way trip anyway.

Drummerboy08

+1.

Your best bet is to go across on the ferry as a foot passenger, or fly over, and then organise car hire from there.

It would cost a fortune to hire here, and leave it over there, as that car cannot be rehired from the location you leave it in, so it would have to be transported back.

Eoin

Neither Hertz or Avis can give a price for that, and if the larger companies won't then I think you're out of luck. Do you need to bring something over that rules out flying over?

Berty

Sixt do. I had a German car in France and queried it. She said any EU car can be driven in any EU through Sixt car hire.

Eoin

Nope!

"One-way rental is unfortunately not possible between the stations you have selected."

Alun

Berty wrote: »

Sixt do. I had a German car in France and queried it. She said any EU car can be driven in any EU through Sixt car hire.

But that's between two EU countries sharing a land border, both of which are LHD ... a totally different situation. I often got German reg cars when I rented cars in the Netherlands and vice versa. Your average Frenchman, however, probably wouldn't be very happy getting a RHD Irish reg car, if he turned up at his local car-hire firm I suspect.

ardmacha

She said any EU car can be driven in any EU through Sixt car hire.

It can be driven in an EU country, but cannot just be abandoned in any EU country. The car has to make its way back to its country of registration, if you don't bring it back the car company has to pay someone to drive it back unless they find someone wanting a one way in the opposite direction. Car hire companies can rent out cars on foreign registrations once or twice but thats it.

testicle

You are not allowed to take hire cars on ferries, if you read the small print.

Berty

Im sorry. I didnt see the one-way rental thing EVEN though it is in the thread title.

My bad.

tony cochrane

Not a hope. The cost of getting the car back from France would be too high. I worked in car hire for a while and I'd be very suprised if a company did it.

fm

tried to do this before from spain to france and was quoted about 1000 euros extra on top of hire price for them to collect the car

Vim Fuego

I'll add another consideration. I hired a car with Avis in Spain and drove to Portugal in 2007, all was good, didn't cost a lot more than normal etc.

When I broke down, it seemed the Spanish and Portuguese offices couldn't decide who's duty it was to collect me so I was hanging around for 6 hours!!!!!

Luckily I was on a beach at the time and to be fair to Avis (well, the people in their Cork office at least), they gave me a full refund after my complaints.

air

If you really have to drive there, you could always buy something cheap (that's likely to survive the journey!) and scrap it once you get there.

IvyTheTerrible

Thanks for all your replies, that's what I thought!

Well I am moving permanently to France, so I was looking into ways to move my stuff. Seeing as I can't rent a van and drive over, I will just organise for a shipping company to do it.

Eoin

My father moved to France last July - want me to get the moving company he used?

biko

Or... buy a big banger here, fill it up with your stuff, drive it there and crush it.
Alternately put it on carzone

Alun

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

Well I am moving permanently to France, so I was looking into ways to move my stuff. Seeing as I can't rent a van and drive over, I will just organise for a shipping company to do it.

How much stuff do you have, and how quickly do you want / need it? I assume that since you're thinking of doing it yourself, that there isn't that much to move?

For international moves, removal companies will do a so-called "part-load" where they save up smaller loads and wait until they have enough to fill one truck, and then do just the one return journey. Only problems are that you might end up waiting a while for them to get enough together for a load, and also seeing as they're making several stops at the other end, the time they actually arrive at your new place can be a bit unpredictable too, especially if you're at the end of the chain as it were.

Also, look into both Irish and French removal companies if you can. My experience when I moved here from the Netherlands was that the Irish companies were on the face of it reasonably competitive on price, but we insisted on using a Dutch mover we'd used before and had had a good experience with. I'm glad we did because the Dutch movers arranged for a couple of guys from one of the biggest Irish movers (the one we nearly went with) to come and help them unpack the van, and promptly sent them home packing (!) after less than an hour after they saw what a mess they were making of the job (stuff broken, walls scuffed etc.) and finished it all on their own with just the two of them.


Good luck with the move!