Car Hire - cost of Snow Tires

I have booked a hire car from Munich airport for next week. However, after I had made the booking, I noticed that they would be looking for an extra €50 for snow tyres (needless to say this was not highlighted on the booking page).

This is obviously a complete rip-off and clearly, I should have done more research before making the booking.

I understand that it is a legal requirement for all cars in Germany to have winter tyres on at this time of of the year. Can anybody confirm?

If so, surely the car hire companies would be legally bound to supply cars fitted with winter tyres, regardless of whether these are requested or not. Does anybody know whether this is the case?

Would it be safe to assume that the hire cars will have winter tyres fitted at this time of the year?

The actual law says something along the lines of you must have 'tires that appropriate for the conditions'. So if'ts snowing/icy, then yeah you have to have winter tires. If it's a nice sunny dry day, then you can use summer tires whether it's winter or not.

Not massively surprising rental companies will try and squeeze an extra few € out of you if they can get away with it I guess.

Wanderer wrote:I have booked a hire car from Munich airport for next week. However, after I had made the booking, I noticed that they would be looking for an extra €50 for snow tyres (needless to say this was not highlighted on the booking page).

This is obviously a complete rip-off and clearly, I should have done more research before making the booking.

I understand that it is a legal requirement for all cars in Germany to have winter tyres on at this time of of the year. Can anybody confirm?

If so, surely the car hire companies would be legally bound to supply cars fitted with winter tyres, regardless of whether these are requested or not. Does anybody know whether this is the case?

Would it be safe to assume that the hire cars will have winter tyres fitted at this time of the year?

I have always found (in france to be fair) that the hire car comes with Snow Tyres when hiring in ski season....but who knows!

Not quite the law but it's a con I think. They just can't have rows of cars some with winter tires on and some without and they can't seriously be swapping the tires on each rental.

I was going to say the marginal cost to them of winter tires must be practically nothing but I wonder if that's true thinking about it, a lot of the hire companies probably do swap the cars before they're through the first set of tires,

The law and what customers want are probably less a concern than their insurance though, I doubt they'd be covered for an accident on a winter road without winter tires on.

I am in the same boat (hiring a car from Munich), all the sites I looked at charged extra for winter tyres.

Regards making things clear.

I ended up going with car hire 3000, when they e-mailed my voucher through it was for Thrifty hire. When I looked up Thrifty I found out they are not based in the airport and that I needed to get a bus to the compound on some industrial estate 10 minutes away.

I rang them and after they checked they agreed with me that it was off site and that they should make it clearer during booking and on the voucher that they are off site. They changed my booking to Avis which was slightly more expensive.

Still cheaper than Avis direct.

If you are picking the car up in one of the Alpine airports the odds are that the car will have them on already & if you are a bit firm they may well back down (they are hardly going to take the car to the depot & dig out summer tyres & wheels) as it's their role to hire a car that's fit for purpose. They don't charge extra for summer tyres!

If you are arranging the hire at this end it may well be worth contacting the company to put a note on the rental voucher along the lines of "including winter tyres". Thay way it averts the winter tyre suppliment before they you have to argue at the airport.

in Austria evry car has to have winter tires from the 1st of november on, i dont know bout germany but probably its the same!

I got caught last year because most car rental companies don't give the option to book winter tyres in advance.

I refused to pay at the desk, so they didn't give me the car I ordered (which obviously already had winter tyres on) but instead found me a car with summer tyres - a brand new Mercedes 4x4 - and made me sign a form to acknowledge that they had told me winter tyres are mandatory in Austria.

I was feeling pretty good driving around in a top of the range 4x4 for the price of a compact until half way through the holiday someone told me the insurance was void! (Car hire company didn't tell me this)

I didn't enjoy driving much after that and have never been so relieved as when I returned their £60,000+ car to them.

So, the moral is don't rely on them giving you your car with the winter tyres anyway - they can be very bloody minded.