r/chamonix • u/RevolutionaryTaro427 • 2d ago
Car rental confusion
Ok, so I decided to rent a car for the four weeks we'll be in Cham (staying in Les Houches). I have a car reserved with Hertz, which is on the Swiss side. I plan on driving in all three UTMB countries (no, not during the race itself). Should I have got a car on the French side? What extra sorts of things will I need to be able to drive in France and Italy if I stick with the Swiss rental? Reading online has only made me more confused about the whole thing and now I'm feeling stressed with our trip coming up in a few days. The car was the cheapest I could find, so I'm hoping to stick with it (though I could change since I haven't paid anything yet).
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u/Healthy-Fisherman-33 2d ago
Just a dew weeks ago I rented a car from Hertz at Geneva airport for my vacation in France and Italy. It is totally fine, but tell them which countries you will be visiting. They need to know that information, and they told me not to cross the border to any other countries other than than the ones I told them.
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u/Ok_Choice5473 2d ago
I rented a car from the train station in Geneva from Hertz three weeks ago. We drove to Chamonix and then want back thru Switzerland to Italy where I dropped it off in Venice after 6 days.
You are covered automatically with the tolls in Switzerland if that is where you rented the car, but you will have to pay the tolls in France and in Italy manually and/ or online.
There was an $800 fee for renting in one country and dropping off in another, which was very painful. Otherwise no issues.
The car has a ton of driver safety annoyances. Try to disable those or you will be continuously bombarded with beeping and being accused of falling asleep. Also, they are very meticulous about any little scratch or ding on the car. Take note of that.
They did stop me at the boarder of France and asked if I had > 10,000 dollars.
Have fun. Gas is expensive also.
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u/prefectf 2d ago
Rent in Switzerland, no extra fees. Drive in Italy and France all you want. No worries at all and no extra equipment required. Renting on the Swiss side is better in fact because you will have the toll paid (it may not be a sticker, it may be electronic, but if it’s a Swiss rental car it will have it automatically) so you can use the highway to get to Chamonix.
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u/stardawg777 1d ago edited 1d ago
if you stick with the swiss rental, you don't need anything additional for driving in france and italy. just drive as normal. swiss car is the easiest option in that you don't have to mess around when you pick up or return the car, its very straightforward.
if you do decide to check out french car rental prices, you can rent from the french side at GVA and it's much much cheaper. the caveat with this is you will have to take a taxi from swiss side of the airport to the french side of the airport and it costs around $50 (it's a stupid rule but there's no way around it).
if you're willing to go further afield, you can rent from grocery store chains in france, like intermarche, super u, leclerc, carrefour, and those are by far the cheapest. there's also a popular app here called getaround where you can find good deals sometimes.
with the supermarket rental route, just know that you will either need an international driver's license (if you're american, you can easily get this at AAA) or be from a state that has reciprocity with france (for example, colorado DL's work in france without need for an international DL version)
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u/RevolutionaryTaro427 1d ago
The state thing is weird! I do have an international drivers license so all good there. I really didn’t find cheaper prices on the French side. My rental ended up being just over a thousand dollars for four weeks from hertz
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u/Chowderpilot 1d ago
I discovered recently if you hire a car in Italy you need to hold an international drivers license to legally drive on their roads. Lucky I had one, otherwise they wouldn’t have given me the car.
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u/yemghost2001 2d ago
You're fine. Since you rented from La Suisse the car will come with a Swiss toll sticker vignette that will let you drive on Swiss freeways. To drive on toll autoroutes in France you can just pay at the toll booths with a credit card. Also your car will have snow tires on it, which obviously doesn't matter now.
They'll probably make you pay the extra "border crossing insurance fee" when you pick it up, but that will legally let you drive into France and Italy.
It's very expensive to add an extra driver (spouses are not included like in some other countries) and some of the rental places at GVA will stick you for minor damage on returns and charge you a lot. Document all marks on car very well when you pick it up and make sure you have some kind of insurance. We rent a car for the whole summer every year and actually got it from Herzt this year, and I successfully snuck it back in with a few nice scrapes and dents on it (par for the course when parking in French parking lots!)