A warning for anyone hiring a car from Leclerc. They can’t cope with someone taking their hire car across a border. We had booked a hire car and paid a deposit for my wife to drive to Luxembourg today to visit her Dad. At Leclerc today they looked deeply suspiciously at her Belgian license and Luxembourg passport and asked if she was planning to take the hire car to Luxembourg. When she said yes, they said well I’m afraid we can’t let you have the car, as our insurance doesn’t cover anywhere outside France. Btw this completely contradicted what they’d told us on the phone, as I’d rung to check in advance, as I’d like to take a hire car to the UK in September. We have also lost our deposit for good measure.
I wonder if others have had the same experience. We’ve now booked in with another hire company which had no concerns about her taking the car across borders. It seems the issue is not Belgium or Luxembourg per se, but the risks of taking the car to Eastern Europe…and vanishing!
I am not surprised a small outfit like LeClerc could cope with the higher premiums for international cover as they do not have the resource such as the likes of Hertz etc to recover a car.
I am very surprised that they kept your deposit. I would complain bitterly at the top if it were me. I doubt if it is even legal…
Geographically - maybe, though no doubt hard-line Brexiteers wish there was some way of towing it across the Atlantic and parking it somewhere near Florida.
My son is thinking of renting from Leclerc but do you need to be a french resident if so if I rented the car and added him as an additional driver would that be okay
You need to read the terms and conditions. If I recall they only say that you need an EU style licence but I’ve heard of some branches refusing. It seems that branches can be a law into themselves.
My Leclerc car lady at local Leclerc has assured me a British passport and even also British residential address, eg if tourist visiting, is fine. Best to bring proof as required not just of residence (required, it’s in the ts and cs) but also of where you’re staying in France if a tourist (if you can).
I am always in search of decent rates for car hire in France but they are hard to find. Major car rental chains don’t have the mileage limits that can easily rack up the price on Leclerc hires. Carrefour does consider the UK to be Europe and was OK to take their vehicle there but they do also charge for the mileage from a relatively low limit.
If anyone knows of any membership etc in France giving acces to reasonable hire car rates then I’d join something (within reason) just for that.
Agreed. By the time I’d done the travel to Rodez and beyond then back in my Leclerc hire car I’d paid probably more than if I’d gone for one of the majors. The benefit of Leclerc’s is that it’s only 10 minutes drive away and there would have been much more hassle getting to and from one of the larger hire companies.
It was the same for me when my breakdown insurance covered a hire car from Granada to Gerona, but not over the Spanish border into France. They paid for a night in a hotel, then a taxi to Perpignan, where I then picked up a French hire car to drive home. This was a few years ago now.
Similarly, I managed to get myself blacklisted by Herz for a couple of years after mistakenly returning a French hire car from Geneva airport to the Swiss drop off point at the same airport…
I can understand their reluctance to permit one way hires into another country as they need to get the car back somehow and (I’m speculating) there may be some complications with renting out a Spanish car in France. C’est la France, c’est compliqué
I probably wouldn’t use Herz anyway - tend to stick with Europcar as they are normally cheaper but banning you for what was clearly a good faith mistake seems overly harsh.
Of course I am. I was thinking of French national, which I am not. Thanks Gareth. It’s been a long day. Time to say Goodnight. 
