Yaatri

Wirelessly posted (Samsung Galaxy S: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.6; en-us; SGH-T959V Build/GINGERBREAD) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

You are rigjht that scientidically speaking there is no reason to continue to use water to define temperature scale. Boiling and freezing points of water vary too, dpending on pressure.
That's why we have the thermodynamic scale, which is very close to the absolute scale.
Water became the basis os a temperature scale as all three staes of water are easily found within human reach.

mom_rules

How very timely. We just got back from Frankfurt where we rented a car from Dollar (Thrifty/Terspatten) and I will say never again.
We paid the extra for an automatic BMW A4 and were "upgraded" to a Kia Sorrento which came with GPS (no extra charge). So far, so good right? Until the insurance question came up. We specifically checked with our Platinum Visa card provider-twice and obtained a written letter of confirmation specifically stating that we were covered in Germany. When we presented the letter to the desk agent he declined it and made us purchase their coverage (other option was not to rent-in hindsight-we should have walked and used their excellent train system instead). The cost for this insurance coverage? $26 Euro per day plus 19% VAT. Our $200 Euro rental ended up costing us $425 Euro. We made sure that we received a copy of the return report that there was no damage to the vehicle on its return. In addition to this they charged to our credit card a $300 Euro damage deposit-so total charge to our Visa card was $725 Euro. We made sure that we received a $300Euro credit to our card before we left the airport but taking the exchange into account received $50 less (they bill at one exchange rate and credit at a much lower exchange rate).
We have filed a letter of complaint to the rental agencies involved, to Visa and their insurance division. Will let you know how that goes but we're not holding our breath. Anyone have an email for the European Commission for unfair business practices?

brightshark

But do remember to stop at or before the border to buy a "highway license" (type of toll: look for signs for Vignette aka Pikerl in "Austrian") for driving on the Austrian highways. Driving without one will mean a fine by the Austrian police (if I remember correctly my friend got one recently of around 150€).

Otherwise, to avoid that inconvenience I normally set my satnav to "avoid toll roads" from Munich to Salzburg: since the german autobahn is not tolled, it then takes you all along the A8 to just before the border and then routes you over the secondary roads into Salzburg (about 10-15 min longer trip, traffic depending which is about equal to the time spent buying/applying the highway license onto your car).

sparkchaser

This is just one man's opinion but I don't see your experience as an unfair business practice. Fluctuating exchange rates are a fact of life.

FWIW, Sixt has never "made" me purchase their coverage. (Only mentioned because you might want to use them next time.)

exbayern

The one time I made a reservation with them, it stated very clearly on the website what sort of documentation was required from the credit card company in order to utilise their insurance coverage. I don't believe that you can claim anything about unfair business practices.

On a side note, do you mean dollar or Euro? It is rather confusing when a few FTers post currencies as 'EuroDollar'.

But thank you for reconfirming what I stated earlier about built in GPS being virtually standard now.

Circumnavigate

Go to www.gemut.com for rentals. Been using for 10 years on my intl rentals. There's a ton of car rental advice and their prices are really good! Cheers!

Ps, buy a gps - I have a Garmin and got the NT Europe city card. It makes your driving much better. Even Paris is easy to navigate with it!

AtoB

Get a decent car. Enjoy.

pinniped

I got the sense that the earlier poster was talking about an agency using two different exchange rates - one for billing and one for crediting. That would be odd, since the whole thing should happen in Euro and the agency shouldn't be doing any actual currency conversion. Your credit card would do that, and you'd be able to validate each day's exchange rate against the posted method your bank uses to compute it.

So either the earlier poster is mistaken (and the rental agency didn't do anything with currencies at all) or something very strange was going on with that rental.

Re:highway passes. You need them for both Austria and Slovenia but they weren't all that expensive and you could buy them at any rest area. Once you hit Croatia, it's back to traditional tolls...at least it was in 2009...but the Croatians accepted pretty much any credit card we had including non-chipped ones.

German rental agencies will allow some makes/models to travel farther than others. I think for the BMW's and such, you weren't allowed to go beyond Austria. We told them our countries of travel (as far south as Croatia) and they gave us a Kia.

We always carry our own GPS just in case the one in the car isn't intuitive to us. (The one in the German Kia, for example, had very odd English translations and some settings that never translated.) Besides, if you're going somewhere where having the latest possible map updates is important, you can control that. Sadly, it's sometimes cheaper to buy a whole new GPS unit than to either buy maps for an existing unit or rent a unit from the rental agency.

sparkchaser

I carry my own GPS as well. It's just easier plus I can make sure I have the latest maps.

Also, Czech Republic also requires the toll sticker.

mom_rules

I got the sense that the earlier poster was talking about an agency using two different exchange rates - one for billing and one for crediting. That would be odd, since the whole thing should happen in Euro and the agency shouldn't be doing any actual currency conversion. Your credit card would do that, and you'd be able to validate each day's exchange rate against the posted method your bank uses to compute it.

The rental agency actually charged our card in dollars-they did the conversion prior to posting it.

stifle

That'll be why then. Never, ever, ever accept a merchant's conversion of your credit card charge. Always insist on being billed in the local currency.

sparkchaser

Regardless, that's not an unfair business practice.

exbayern

Agreed. But I also thought that the poster was referring to Thrifty's insurance policy requirements, which are very strict if using credit card coverage, but which are also clearly laid out in the email confirmation and on the booking. I did once make a booking for them at MUC during a giant snowstorm and it was all clearly laid out during booking, confirmation email, and at the counter.

But there were still people shouting and screeching about how in America they can use their credit card for coverage at Thrifty. (One can in Germany as well, so long as one provides the details they require)

If anything, two things can be learned from that poster:
- always have the vendor charge the card in local currency
- always read policies and statements very carefully and don't expect that they will be the same as at 'home'

Neither of those by the way seem to me to be 'unfair business practices'.

punktlich02

On driving licenses I would be guided by the semi-official US Embassy Paris advice: http://photos.state.gov/libraries/fr...es-driving.pdf The rules in other EU/EEA/Swiss countries are similar.

That said, I have never, ever (not since the 1960s) been asked for an IDP anywhere in Europe, or in fact anywhere but Japan. I have rented cars using a California license and a UK license I actually took a test for; and a French license that I got in 1980 on exchange for a US license.

European Union licenses are valid throughout the EU/EEA if a test was taken to get it, and in the UK until age 70. They're in the language of the issuing country so I find the Embassy's advice to get a certified translation in certain cases odd: for a Bulgarian or a Greek or a Polish (etc.) license they couldn't require one.

That said, if you don't have the right license you won't get the car. And if you get a radar-camera ticket, the rental company will give the police your license address and the ticket will be mailed to you in the USA.

pinniped

It would depend. If the merchant converts an amount for you prior to a CC transaction, it could be done unfairly. There are threads here of hotels doing this in certain parts of the world.

I still think whatever happened upthread was not Dollar's trickery, but rather normal exchange rate fluctuations between the dates of the original billing and the eventual credit. Given the gradual decline of the Euro vs. the dollar in the past few months, it's likely that the billed amount was at a higher rate than the later credited amount.

But only slightly. A couple percent...