Last night I was trying to book a one day rental from Nantes in February. I did this on Avis UK. I kept getting Ł71 for what amounted to a Fiat 500 (Four wheels and a motor stylish though it may be). I thought that this was dear for off-season and at a weekend. Him Indoors went on to Avis.Fr and the same car was €49! I thought that he had made a mistake so I tried it - and there it was.

Why is there such a considerable difference for the same vehicle without using any discount whatsoever. Is this another example of Rip-Off Britain?

Any thoughts or Knowledge?

This is very common and has been discussed in the past. Often rentals are priced differently depending on what home country you choose. The same thing happens with Hertz. It always pays to "shop around".

Insurance cover and included miles exactly the same?

www.sixt.co.uk will offer different packages to www.sixt.de even for rental cars which are collected (and returned) in Germany. If you need unlimited mileage this can easily work to your advantage.

The insurance was the same. The difference was that there is a limit of 250km per day. That would matter if you were going far - that is true. We will do about 200km round trip. What is interesting is that all the rental companies have a similar rate for similar vehicles all have the 250km limit.

However - have we any idea why there is this discrepancy on pricing and offers from one country to another?

Just because they can.

Various factors.

For one thing, the competition may be different. Yes, the same competition exists at the airport location no matter where you're booking from. But which ones of those you tend to be aware of (and/or trust) may vary depending on where you're from. So if the competition at the actual airport location includes some companies well known in France but less known in the UK, the French site might feel it needs to compete with those companies while the UK feels it doesn't.

Difference in name recognition and "followers" might be another factor. If Avis has way less name recognition or regular customers in France compared to the UK, they may (to borrow a famous Avis catch phrase) "try harder" on the French website than on the UK website (where they don't have to "try" to get lots of people to book).

Finally, who knows, there could be laws in the UK making booking through UK website higher or laws in France making booking through French websites lower.

On the LATAM Airlines forum, it's often discussed (while noting that prices for the same light can different on different countries' websites) that while some South American countries' websites can be used (to get those prices) by anyone, others have prices that are only valid for citizens of that country. So might some countries be subsidizing fares (or car rental fees) bought in that country? I don't quite know why all these country differences for flights and rental cars exist, but obviously it's not limited to Avis.)

Thank you for a reasoned and sensible answer. I understand that they can do as they please, I just did not understand the motivations.

Thus it is worth as another has suggested shopping around - indeed I did just that and a rental in the UK is cheaper when booked on the Spanish site. Indeed it amounted to €10 on a one day rental.

Last question, as with discounts, could one be denied a car booked on the Avis site country where one neither lives nor has a credit card?

Why would you need to give a fake address?

One more thing to be aware of: It seems that Avis may do liability/etc insurance differently if you're booking in a different country than you're renting. It'll assume your own auto liability insurance covers you in your home country, but may not assume that in other countries. But it may base that on which country's website you're using to book! So make sure that insurance you expect to be included (given that you're renting in a different country than you live) is still included when you book at a foreign (to you) Avis website (if it's included when booking on your "home" Avis website). This is especially important if certain coverage is legally required by visitors from outside that country, and yet is left off if you're booking using a website in that country.

Within the USA, the legal requirements for insurance vary from state to state, and some people have gotten in trouble because of not knowing that:

That is a very brave & courageous assumption.
What is common is USA is not always that way other country's. People in the USA often seem to assume the rest of world has practices and laws like in USA. That is not so.

One catch I've found with Avis when using a different country is that you can't assign your Avis Preferred account to the booking. Even at the counter I've had them be unable to add the number due to the country not matching.

As a part of the booking process Avis used to ask you to confirm you were a resident of the country you were booking from, although I'm not sure if they still do.

By contrast, Hertz used to specifically state in the contract that you were claiming to be a resident of the country you booked from, but that disappeared a few years ago.

In that case if you are using a different country website , with the exception of Avis.com for EU members, you can just log in on that site and the profile is kept.
Haven't changed the country of residence when renting so I cannot comment on that

Why indeed. I never suggested this. It would not agree with my credit card and could be denied.