Marseille-Nice-Monaco-Aix-en-Provence-Avignon-Nîmes-Marseille

Due to having multiple drivers, we were informed about the young driver fee and additional charges only when returning the car. This doubled the cost and exceeded our budget.

The staff's English is decent, but they strictly close at 8 PM with no key drop box available, so you can't return the car after hours.

The store was easy to find, but there were a lot of people in line upon arrival. There were over a dozen customers ahead of me, and the staff was working very slowly. The reserved model was not available, and I was given a smaller manual car that couldn’t accommodate five people. I arrived at 10:00 AM to pick up the car and had to wait until 3:00 PM, which wasted a lot of time and disrupted my plans.

I booked because the pick up was close to my hotel and I chose a Ford Focus because I drive one at home and would have found it easier to drive than another car. I was offered an 'upgrade' - a Jeep in bright metallic blue with all sorts of flap-doodles that I did not need. Luckily there was still a stick shift Renault Clio available and I opted to take that. There is always the assumption that the customer wants a 'new' car and every extra but having driven in French cities before one quickly notices that almost the only new cars are hire cars and that local drivers drive beat-up bangers and regard driving as a contact sport. I would be happier driving something that looked less conspicuous. In fact we were so anxious that we asked for the insurance 'up-sell'!