Hertz - Any tips to lower cross-border one-way rental cost in Europe?

I need to book a rental car for a week in early September, picking up in Nice and dropping off in Bilbao. Right now, Hertz is coming out the cheapest thanks to their 'affordable Europe' promotion, at around US$860 all-in for a compact. The vast majority of this cost is the one-way fee, which is over 300 euros. This does seem to be the hazard of trying to do one way rentals between countries in Europe - does anyone have any tricks / codes / ideas for how to reduce this amount, or do I have to just suck it up?

I spoke to Auto Europe, who are supposed to be experts at this sort of thing, and they quoted me a cost of at least $100 more on Hertz, and around $925 on Europcar (albeit with a free upgrade to a midsize). Sixt have nice vehicles but runs to about $1300 for a VW Golf or similar.

Any thoughts or ideas very gratefully received!

thanks :)

You will always get a huge drop charge for cross border rental in Europe. The rental company has to pay for repatriation (expensive and lots of hassle for them) or re-registering the vehicle (expensive and lots of hassle for them).

Why not drop the car somewhere like Biarritz / Bayonne, which is in France and so avoids the cross border drop charge. This is only a relatively short distance to Bilbao. Then take a train or bus across the border for the last leg of your trip.

you can also try to get a car with spanish plates. The drop off fee would be waived as your saving them the cost of repartriating the car to the home country.

The only caveat is that they cannot tell you in advance if they have one, a change over in another city may be possible.

In Nice you may have more chance with Italian licensed cars than spanish. I've had the opportunity in Montpellier and Perpignan in the past.

Hope this works for you

Agree with the suggestion to return your car on the border and then take a bus/train to your destination.

However, if you must have a car for all pieces, another option could be to return your car at the border (most in-country rentals don't have one-way fees) and then pick up a second car at a higher rate for the one-way.

Finally, I've had better luck with Avis in europe in recent years given some of the good discount codes available in the forum.