Planning to rent a car at Frankfurt airport but have read horror stories about excessive damage claims for minor scratches and the like. Would I have better luck at the rental agencies at the train stations?

YES YES YES

I just did this last month at Frankfurt. The car rental wasn't too bad but much more tedious than in the USA. My company's deal is with National but... my travel agent forgot to put in my frequent renter number so I had to go through the regular line like a normal plebe. Also, when I got down to the area where I picked up the car (I'm super duper status with National so I'm used to having my run of picking out whatever I want but that doesn't play in Europe as it turns out), they will try to upsell you on getting a nicer car for 20 Euro per day. I took the upgrade to a Mercedes C180 because the customer I was calling on was Daimler and I thought it would be more appropriate to show up in one of their products.

They did all sorts of strange games with credit card authorizations so I wound up with something like 1200 Euro charged against my card for what should have been a 400 Euro rental. There was one charge for the car and one charge for damages.

Then, when I turned it in, I got credited back about 800 Euro in two different transactions. Somewhere in the credit card shuffle, they forgot charge me for the 20 Euro per day upgrade to the Mercedes. Their paperwork was so convoluted, I couldn't really figure out what was going where.

Anyway, they did the hard sell on prepaying the petrol which I declined. That C180 got phenomenal gas mileage (like close to 40mpg) so I just filled up before I left the town where I was staying 30 km from the Frankfurt airport. I did get to speed like a madman on the Autobahn (got up to 200 kmh) but, I managed to score a speed camera ticket the last night I was there in the little town where I was staying north of Frankfurt.

The only problem I had with the rental was that somewhere along the line, I picked up a door ding over the driver's side front wheel well. I didn't notice it at all on the black car but, the Turkish guy (I know, I probably don't need to highlight that he was Turkish but... he didn't speak any English and I only know about 25 words of German so we struggled to communicate - regular Germans and Turkish German children all speak good English) who was checking the car on turn-in did an intensive inspection of the car and noticed it. This guy got out his phone and started using the flashlight feature to inspect this door ding and then acted like he was going to charge me for the damage to the car. Luckily, he couldn't do the paperwork himself and called over a supervisor who was a Turkish guy who spoke reasonable English.

The supervisor got out the official measuring tool to see how big the dent was. When I got the car they said that the 800 Euro damage deposit would be refunded to me as long as I brought the car back with no damage that was larger than the size of a golf ball (5cm, I think). So, flashlight guy keeps harping about the dent (in Turkish) which wasn't noticeable without the flashlight but supervisor guy explains to him that it's smaller than 5cm so, no he'll let me slide. Supervisor guy apologized to me for the 5 minute delay due to the damage inspection. He explained to me that flashlight guy was new and oops, it looks like they forgot to charge me for the 20 Euro/day upgrade, have a nice flight.

Although I try to exude as much Americana as I can, I'm 6'3", speak very plain unaccented English and look like a member of the Hitler Youth so all that privilege might have played in my favor in Germany. YMMV

Any recommendations on how to have a pleasant rental car experience in Germany? My wife and I are going to Berlin in November, and I would really like to rent a Porsche for a day and drive the Autobahn and see the countryside.

When we went to Prague we rented from Hertz online ahead of time. Picking up the car was smooth and no issues. We paid a little more than some of the smaller companies but well worth it. I'll do the same if we go anywhere else in the future.

coop-aero-06 said:

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Any recommendations on how to have a pleasant rental car experience in Germany? My wife and I are going to Berlin in November, and I would really like to rent a Porsche for a day and drive the Autobahn and see the countryside.

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What you're looking for is probably more like one of these high end track days they have.
A French colleague of mine does these super car track days where you pay maybe $500 or something and get to drive like 3-5 different exotic cars for a few laps each around a long course like Nurburgring.

I can't find a link to what my French friend was doing (I think he drove his experience at LeMans) but here are a couple of sites that you might be interested in.
http://www.rentracecar.de/en/
http://www.rent4ring.de/en/rentals-for-the-nordschleife.html
https://www.trackdays.co.uk/driving-experience/nurburgring/

Rented from Budget in Munich a couple of weeks ago at the airport...all employees spoke decent English and was very much an "American" type car rental experience. Showed up to drop the car off, the guy briefly checked for damage and a full gas tank and sent me on my way.

Overall a good/regular experience save the MASSIVE line at the airport (2.5+ hours), seemed like every tourist from the US or UK was renting with Budget -- was the only company with any such line at the airport that day. Have fun on the Autobahn!

I rented a car in Germany a few years back. We had it for a week prior to Oktoberfest so we could drive all around Bavaria. After returning the car, they falsely claimed that we scratched the car and got charged an extra 300+ Euro. I tried to fight it through AAA (who set up my rental car for me) and my credit card company, but it didn't work. It was total bull***** I don't remember which rental agency we used, but I think it was an American one...maybe Hertz??? We rented from the Munich airport and returned to a different Munich location a week later.

With that said, driving through Bavaria for a week (Salzburg, Eagle's Nest, Konigsee, Garmisch Partenkirchen, Partnach Gorge, Zugspitz, Andechs Abbey, Linderhof Palaces, Neuschwanstein Castle, Ruette & its castle ruins, the Autobahn, and everything else along the way was worth every extra penny that we got screwed out of by the car rental company.

Rented in Munich with Avis about 4 years ago. I am a frequent renter and got upgraded to a full size Mercedes - nicest car I've driven. Driving was easy there (we went to Austria and Slovenia with it) and no issues with returning (we did take photos of the car when we picked it up)

Just don't use Thrifty in Frankfurt and you should be ok. I use Sixt in Europe and have never had any issues.

I did Enterprise from Frankfurt Airport and had no issues..I did pay for the full coverage through Enterprise because USAA doesn't cover any damages overseas.

we rented in munich and drove through Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy and Austria. No problems at all.

Bayside Tiger Ag said:

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Planning to rent a car at Frankfurt airport but have read horror stories about excessive damage claims for minor scratches and the like. Would I have better luck at the rental agencies at the train stations?

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I thought that was just me...

Rented a car for several days (through Hertz) to meander from Vienna to Munich. Several days later, I got slammed with "damage" fees. I asked for proof and they emailed me a picture of a small rock ding on the front of the car. I called and said "You have to be kidding me," but they didn't budge. Thankfully my Capital One card took care of it completely. It was a hassle though.

I don't have any recommendations, but check your coverage for the card you book it with (or opt for the additional coverage through the rental company).

The deal with Thrifty at Frankfurt is they won't accept your credit card insurance unless you have a letter of coverage from them specifically covering your trip. It's not hard to get, they just require that exact document or else they force you to buy their insurance.

Interesting, looks like this has been going on for a long time


I rented from Hertz about 25 years ago and when I dropped off at the Munich airport, the tech guy was going over the car with a fine tooth comb. Finally, he says, "You've damaged the car!". I said, "No I didn't". He walked me around to the passenger's back panel and showed me the tiniest ding you've ever seen. It took a few seconds of looking to see what he was talking about. I also gave him the "You have to be kidding me" line but he held firm. I asked to see a supervisor and he said they'd get one. He then proceeds to show me how the inspection is done. He has one of those 3 sheet carbon copy papers with a drawing of a car. They circle any damage they see on the top copy and then they have a binder with the car that gets one of the copies. If there are circles on the previous copies, they assume you didn't damage the car. If not, you're guilty. He showed me the top few copies in the binder and none had a circle. I kept telling him that the damage was so small that it could easily be missed by other inspections. He then started flipping through the older copies and one about 8 or 10 down had a circle. He looked at it and said "Oh look, it's circled here, so no problem, your good to go." I said "Thanks", left, and never heard from them again. Very odd.

I've rented out of Frankfurt three times over the past two years. Used Enterprise. One week at a time and never had a problem with them. The drop-off process at the airport was pretty identical to the states in my experience. They did a once around and were pretty casual about it.