Winter Tyres - Watch This - Buy Some!

Tony_H wrote:

Wanderer wrote:I am firmly of the view that winter tyres are an essential piece of kit when travelling to ski resorts.

However, I am travelling to the Dolomites in February and cannot get them from any of the car hire companies in Venice, despite the Italians introducing new regulations requiring cars in the alpine areas to be properly "equipped" :twisted:. It would appear that having chains meets the legal requirement.

I feel I have no choice but to take a very expensive taxi transfer instead. Its very frustrating :evil: :evil: :evil:.

I rented a car at Munich a couple of years ago and drove to AUSTRIA. The hire company said winter tyres were a chargeable extra when I went to pick the car up, something ridiculous like 30EU a day so I said I would stick with regular tyres. Low and behold, all the rental cars had winter tyres fitted to them anyway, so it was all a massive scam to get you to pay extra!!!! And that was AVIS!!!!

Tony
Munich will now generally give you winter tyres and I think any charges are usually relatively low so its not a problem. However, the Italian car hire companies do not seem to get the need for them - possibly as they are rarely needed further South :shock:.

Be careful assuming that winter tyres will always be provided even if you don't pay for them - I seem to remember reading (possibly on here) about a guy who refused to pay for winter tyres and the carhire company went out of their way to find a car without them for him :twisted:. I think it was a fancy car but the guy was crapping himself for the duration of the trip in case he did any damage :oops:.

Tony_H wrote:

Wanderer wrote:I am firmly of the view that winter tyres are an essential piece of kit when travelling to ski resorts.

However, I am travelling to the Dolomites in February and cannot get them from any of the car hire companies in Venice, despite the Italians introducing new regulations requiring cars in the alpine areas to be properly "equipped" :twisted:. It would appear that having chains meets the legal requirement.

I feel I have no choice but to take a very expensive taxi transfer instead. Its very frustrating :evil: :evil: :evil:.

I rented a car at Munich a couple of years ago and drove to AUSTRIA. The hire company said winter tyres were a chargeable extra when I went to pick the car up, something ridiculous like 30EU a day so I said I would stick with regular tyres. Low and behold, all the rental cars had winter tyres fitted to them anyway, so it was all a massive scam to get you to pay extra!!!! And that was AVIS!!!!

I thought that was the case! I'm just getting quotes for a car to do exactly that and winter tyres are 16 Euros extra per day
Something didn't smell right as I got a car fitted with snow tyres last year for roughly half the price of this year's quote

Just spoke to the desk in Munich and lo and behold cars come with winter tyres fitted as standard

Guess I won't bother to pay the extra and "risk" it

I have hired cars from Munich Airport for most of the past 12 years. This year, being a big group year, I have hired a 9 seater minibus.

For the past 4 years, Auto Europe have been offering cars with winter tyres included in the "Product". It would be pretty difficult to hire a car that was not fitted with winter tyres. The product description is clear.

Auto Europe consistently offer the best price, or close enough. They also have a system of price matching, should you subsequently find a better rate ~ even a better AE rate.

For the stated period, winter tyres are mandatory in Austria and Germany between the end of October and the end of March. Hence, it would be difficult/illegal for any hire company to offer summer tyres.

My thoughts exactly Dave

As an aside for those of us that have experienced picking up a hire car at Munich Airport, have you ever wondered where the legend of German efficiency and organisation ever came from?

According to the letter of the law there is no legal requirement to use winter tyres in Austria or Germany between the end of October and the end of March, the laws are situational. It is only mandatory to use them when the road conditions are 'wintery', if there is neither snow, slush nor ice you don't have to use them. There is also no legal requirement for car hire companies to provide them. When the laws first came into force the hire companies charged extra for them, but these days they are fitted as standard and the cost is included in the price. If you book via an agency they might still charge extra for them.

If I need a hire car I usually rent one from Europcar, their German website states (unfortunately only in German) that between 31.10 and 31.03 all their cars are fitted with winter tyres http://www.europcar.de/mietwagen-winterreifen

Winter tyres are also fitted as standard in Austria between 01.11. & 15.04. and in Switzerland between 01.11. & 31.03

They are not fitted as standard in France and Italy, but they are available. Try the search strings: voiture location pneus neige and noleggio auto pneumatici invernali.

smartski wrote:

Winter Tyres - Watch This - Buy Some!

Yes Sir :!:

Ordered a set of Dunlop SP-Winter-Sport-4D today. Due to be delivered in 6 days.

Well I have now travelled and can say that buying winter tyres was the best tip I've been given in a long time!

With heavy traffic to/from the alps at the weekend, we left La Plagne in dry conditions and came down the mountain. The motorways towards Lyon were grid-locked and so I took a gamble taking the D1504 out of Chambery (toward Dijon)...which is when the snow came down.

The winter tyres performed as if there were no snow or ice at all...and I didn't even contemplate needing to put on the snow chains.

However the majority of other cars on the road were hopeless. :roll:

More than a third of the French cars put on their chains before the road was even starting to cover, and left them on well after the roads were cleared (and many English copied them)....this meant travelling at 15/20mph for hours! There was snapped chain debris all over the place.

Another third of the French cars clearly had neither chains nor snow tyres and were slipping & sliding up & down hills through the thick snow and eventually brought roads to a stand-still.

All-in-all it took 7 hours to do about 100miles :shock:

So the only downside of winter tyres is that you still get stuck behind any numpty that hasn't bothered.....compulsory winter tyres would win my vote...everyone would have trundled along nicely. - Go Buy Some!

smartski wrote:you still get stuck behind any numpty that hasn't bothered.....

True... and you need to keep an eye on your mirror when slowing so you can get out of the way if the guy behind can't stop! :roll:

Glad that worked out, albeit with the delay...

I am just back from a great trip to the Dolomites (trip report separately). I finally managed to hire a suitable carwith winter tyres by going directly to the Italian website of Europcar. The international Europcar website was not offering me winter tyres :shock:. Strange but this was the case. I had searched several companies and agencies and really struggled to find any availability on winter tyres. Most of them offered chains and seemed to consider that this was adequate (presumably on the basis that it met the legal requirements).

While we had beautiful weather while in resort, it snowed on both the inward and outward journeys which presented some challenges as I had to travel over the San Pelegrino pass to get to my resort in the Val di Fassa. Without winter tyres, this would have been virtually impossible or, at least would have required me putting on chains (which I have never done). We saw one nasty smash on the return journey and it looked as if a car heading down the hill simply slid into an oncoming car.

Bizarrely, the carhire companies were assuring me that I only needed chains or winter tyres. When I insisted on having both, the person looked at me as if I had two heads :shock: .