Car Hire verses buyback. Which is better?

I%26#39;m getting a lot of great advice from a previous posting regarding hiring a car in Europe however I%26#39;m still confused about the advantages and/or disadvantages of using the France %26#39;buyback schemes%26#39; verses %26#39;hire a car%26#39; from a rental company (eg Europcar and Novacarhire). I am finding that hiring say a 307 Peugeot Estate (27 days)is at least AU$600 cheaper than using buyback for the same vehicle. I have also checked the fine print and have insurance (with an excess on hiring) in both cases. Can anyone explain why I would spend $600 more on buyback. Yes I know you get a new car but hire car ensures you have a car less than 6 months old. I%26#39;m really interested in your thoughts on either option. Hope you can help. Thanks Michael

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I really cant think of a reason you would do a buyback. Typically buybacks are cheaper than rental which is what is compelling about them. I did one from Renault and it was cheaper and I needed a specific car so being able to pick the exact car was important to me.

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Read your fine print on the Buy Back.

I was going to go that way %26quot;Buy Back Program%26quot;...but after reading the contract and speaking to the representive. I found that if you pick up the car in Paris and you drive to ( lets say) Provence and the car breaks down or is wrecked. You must take it to the dealer ( who are not open on weekends).They have three days to fix the car... if they can not fix the car. On your own dime you must get back to Paris to pick up another car to replace that one.

Also the contract said that if you get a flat tire you must replace it your self. Also it stated what time line you had to bring the car in for the scheduled maintance. We were renting for 2 1/2 months so it would take two days out of our travel time!

We used AutoEurop to rent and their vendor was Europcar. We got a car with only about 3,000 miles on it.

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Thanks team for your comments. For the life of me I can%26#39;t find a buy back deal that works out cheaper than car hire. I%26#39;ve been looking since december and getting all the early bird deals etc. The hire car has always proved to be at least $600 cheaper. I%26#39;m inclined to go with the hire companies at this stage....in particular europcar. I%26#39;ve heard some good (and bad) reports about them. Any other thoughts on this topic would be appreciated. Thanks

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We found the same situation in December last year. I thought I must be missing something because %26quot;everyone%26quot; says that leasing is cheaper if you need a car long enough to qualify for the leasing option.

Certainly if I had hired from Avis or Hertz instead of Europcar or if I had bought all of my insurance through the rental company it might have been cheaper to lease.

The reason we saved a lot of money hiring is that I used my own travel insurance policy to take care of the excess instead of using Europcars relatively expensive policy. It meant that I needed to have a credit card with 1000 Euro %26quot;blocked%26quot; until we handed the car back. If there had been any damage done to the car we would have paid the 1000 Euros and then claimed it back from our own insurance. I was satisfied with that set up others may not be.

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I really like Europcar. Cars are really nice and new. Never had any problems. They do sometimes get the bill wrong but correct it with a phone call. Also, the lines to get the car can be long at times because they are fairly popular in France.

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I don%26#39;t know about France, but I think the buy back works very well in Belgium (fewer taxes) if you are planning a long enough stay.

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