Was looking to hire a car for the weekend next month.

Found a Ford Focus £67 for three days on Hertz, which was a decent price - cheaper than Avis and Europcar.

When I went to complete the address details, the country could not be changed from UK.

I went back to the start and notice there was a box for country of residence. I changed it to Switzerland and asked for a quote again.

147 CHF!! A 30% price hike just for living in the wrong country!!

I took my custom to Avis.

I have rented three times with Hertz since September and to be honest I am quite happy with their service and prices.

I am not comparing their pricing between different countries but when comparing major car rental companies, Hertz seemed to be offering the most advantageous most of the time. I have given up comparing Swiss prices to UK's when I noticed how much more expensive the same box of baby food here was.

Thing is, I'm not really comparing Swiss and UK prices. I'm looking at different prices for the very same car being picked up at the very same place being booked on the same website.

The only difference is the country of residence I entered.

I've rented cars in the past from Avis, Europcar and Hertz. I've been happy in every case.

I guess if I'd have put some effort in I could have found a way to telephone Hertz and got the GBP price. But I really couldn't be bothered for the extra £6 I had to pay Avis.

Hertz has the worst web-site of any commercial organisation in the world.
I gave up. What a load of bollo*ks

Schweizer qualität natürlich.

of course... part of the allure of living in CH is that you get to pay more for what is more often than not rather shoddy service.

Maybe the Hertz software has the wrong GBP/CHF rate programmed?

And why are so many EF participants living in this wrong country?

Unfortunately not. The "Pay on return price" was correspondingly higher and in GBP.

I'm not complaining about anything in this country. I'm complaining because I was being overcharged in the UK. If I was paying more to hire a car in Switzerland then I would have no complaint.

Nope, I've seen the same thing going on for years. And it is also when you reserve a car outside of CH. If you have residence CH you pay more. These days I never go via the company web-page when I book cars. I use ebookers or similar. They usually don't care where you are resident

That is correct, hertz (along with other companies) will charge a different rate based on your country of residence. I am not sure but it might be something to do with the taxes, or maybe they just want more money if you reside in CH.

For this purpose mainly (renting a car), i have kept my US credit card in tact which has a US address on it. So far when ever i have rented the car i have used the US based card and got cheaper prices. Sometimes 40% cheaper.

cheers,

I think it is rather more that if you live in CH you don't mind so much being ripped off..

Seriously, they try to charge you what you are used to paying back home.

I know this thread is a bit old but I was boredom-cruising the complaints corner to pass the afternoon and saw this...

I had the same problem with Hertz, I figured out another trick. When you set up an online profile, set your personal / preferred address to a UK address (yours, parents, etc) and then your business address to your CH address. WHen you set up a credit card in your profile it doesn't matter which address is matches, as long as it matches one...just make sure your preferred address is set to UK, then you get UK prices with your CH card. Tidy.

Agree though, Hertz's website wins a prize for being 100% pants.

mmm, that could explain why I was getting surprisingly high quotes for 1 week car hire for when i am back in scotland at xmas.

First time booking from switzerland, previous years from germany were fine.

Alamo, National, Europcar were all charging around 330 GBP from edinburgh airport. (hertz didnt have any available apparently)

Budget were a far more reasonable 240 GBP.

Never actually thought the reason might be due to booking from switzerland.

If you use ebookers make sure you use .com. I just saw that the .ch gives higher prices.

They do charge more... And then having a Swiss driver's licence doesn't help with trying to get around it either.

I dont see how they can justify it though. You are paying for the same service at the same location, surely grounds for discrimination.

Pretty much SOP, unfortunately

It also work in reverse - try comparing the prices of renting in CH,
and see how the price varies depending on residency here or in UK.

Quick example from Europcar: 250chf v. 217gbp


Wee caveat: car hire usually includes some element of insurance which might be based
on things like residency. So misstating that could end up invalidating said insurance;
bummer in the event of a mishap. Just a thought.
.

2 wrongs dont make a right

insurance is basically a gamble by the insurers on the risk of paying out for crash/damage.

if that is the reason for discrepancy then that would suggest a lot of swiss people crashing(or at least claiming) in the uk ?

also there is nowhere in the rental agreement that states my country of residency, and i wasnt asked anywhere online.

nope i am still going to put it down to them being barstewards

Avis does it, too. Visit www.avisworld.com and play with the country of residence. You'll see a huge variation in rates.

Through my experimentation I've found that if you use Ebookers.com (with CH as your country of residence) you get the same or even cheaper prices than if you book on the Hertz/Avis/Europcar website with a UK residence. You also sometimes get other benefits e.g. no additional charges for a once way rental (e.g. collect Heathrow/ drop Gatwick) which is nice.