Thank you for the tip.
There is 10 euros difference between the airport and center of Geneva so not a huge gap.
Do you usually subscribe to the full protection (CDW) of
Never ever the insurance of the car dealer. Also the one from the broker, though better than the dealer, is not cheap.
I did use worldwideisnurance for a few years and also tested them on a claim but lately I don’t rent cars that often anymore and their premium increased a lot, so I just take the risk.
One can have a rental car insurance for around 100 per year. Or as part of a travel insurance.
We are on a mustachian forum, the classic Selbstbehalt is about 3000 CHF, the max I saw was 5000 CHF. That is a risk we should all be able to take without blinking (except if you want to race the car through the city ever day… but then you would probably not be on this forum).
I know that. But we once had a rental agency that demanded the new value of the car in case of a loss/theft with was not covered by the CDW. And this was in Sicily. These 122 CHF just give me peace of mind.
Adding a data point from the Iberian side: for trips out of Lisbon I’ve stopped using the airport desks entirely. The small city-centre outfits quote rates that look similar on paper, but they don’t push the full-insurance upsell at the counter, and the deposit hold on the card is noticeably smaller — which matters if you’re optimising float.
Last autumn I paid €94 for four days including zero-excess through a local operator near Alvalade, while the airport branch of a big chain wanted €61/day plus a €1,200 hold. The maths changes fast once you value the deposit and the two airport-transfer taxi rides at zero.
One habit worth stealing: photograph the car from eight angles at pickup regardless of who you rent from. It settled a disputed scuff claim in about ten minutes of email.
I have the opposite experience: prices at the airport are normally cheaper than downtown (and the desk is open late and on Sundays). I don’t care about the deposit amount and I always successfully refuse the extra insurance demands (ok, they did manage to trick me a couple times, but by now I have rented hundreds of times).
@Giff that tracks with what I saw on the return leg actually - re-checked the app out of curiosity and the airport desk was genuinely cheaper for the same week in August, which is the opposite of what I’d assumed when I wrote the post above. Seems the city-centre premium here is mostly in high season when every tourist walks past their window. The deposit hold was still smaller downtown which is why I keep using them, but for anyone comparing total prices in August: check both, the gap surprised me.
That Portugal thread of mine continues - headed to the Algarve in October for a week (first time off-season) and did the same airport-vs-local comparison for Faro. Ended up booking with a small outfit in Carvoeiro (https://carvoeiro-car-rental.com/) - direct booking came out roughly a third cheaper than the aggregators quoted, and they do Lagoa/Carvoeiro area pickup without the airport surcharge. Planning to base there and loop the coast rather than change towns every night. Will report back on how the off-season roads and parking behave, but if the beaches are half empty in October this might become my default autumn trip.