I am always looking for a bargain, even when I am searching for a car to hire.

Last year when we were house sitting in Provence, we hired a small, old Fiat, which came pre-dented, from one of the large supermarkets in France – SuperU. It was very cheap, or so we think, at €274 for just over 3 weeks, with the only condition that we drove fewer than 500km per week.

We needed to hire a car for the house sit in the Gers, eleven days in total from 8th-18th March. When I searched online, most well-known car hire companies were asking quite high prices for a small car for this period. I also tried SuperU, but found their website very difficult to navigate in French, and I knew that it was necessary to pay a €1000 deposit for the SuperU car based on our experience in Provence, where our hostess at the time, covered that cost (which was extremely generous of her).

I then stumbled across the website for OuiCar – where you can hire a car from an individual who is happy for you to have his or her car for a designated period. The website too is in French, but I did find it okay to navigate. I put my dates into the search tool, along with the location of Auch. I was also asked to indicate how many kilometres I would drive, so I punched in a guess of 1000Km. And, up came a very suitable vehicle for €161 (€0.16/ Km). Not as cheap as SuperU, but not bad. I was however worried if this would work.

I had to pay a deposit of €400 two days before we picked it up.

Very satisfactory, but there were a few hiccups.

The contract I had indicated I could collect the car before 12.00pm, but the owner was adamant it had to be after that (at 12.30pm). He spoke no English and my French is very basic, so I decided not to quibble about that, as it made no difference really to our plans. However, Mick and I spent an hour or so very close to the car we were to hire (we knew its location and number plate and it was right next door to a McDonalds with free wifi) to wait for the owner. He arrived just after 12.30pm but the car had been sitting there available for hours. (????)

He took photos of the car, my licence and passport and a photo of the odometer. He showed me some key features of the car, and for the very first time ever, it was an automatic, which I was very pleased about. He explained that if there was an accident or a problem that we were not to call him, but we had to call OuiCar. Finally, he told us what sort of fuel it took (and that became very important very quickly).

A few minutes after we left, I received an email with the full contract along with all the photos he had just taken. That reassured me a little to think that the company might be quite organised.

A few more minutes later…..

……..literally, I had driven less than 10Km, and the red light came on. We needed fuel.

We found a service station, but because it was ‘siesta time’, and it was automated / self-serve, for some reason the machines did not like our credit cards. This has happened before in France. So all we could do was to drive off in the direction of our house sit, where hopefully we would find another service station with someone to serve us. And thankfully we did.

The car was not clean (and nor was it filthy), and the owner, was a smoker, not only because he had fitted the car with odour fresheners trying to hide the smell of smoke, but he had met us with a fancy black cigarette in his mouth, which was a dead give-away. So the car was a little dirty and a bit smoky and came with a few little dents and scratches, but it was very easy to drive and was economical on fuel.

When we returned it, we did not return it filled with fuel (always return as you find it). It was a very easy handover. All the owner did was check the number of kilometres (only 700Km – I could have saved some money had I guessed a little closer to that amount), and the amount of fuel, and that was in it. He didn’t even notice that Mick had vacuumed the car for him, mainly because the little dog we had to take everywhere with us had shed hair everywhere!!

Now I just have to wait to make sure the €400 deposit is refunded on my credit card.

I have hired two more cars for the next part of our stay in France. But, next time from a Supermarket chain here called E. Leclerc, as its website was much easier to navigate, and I was a bit anxious how OuiCar would work.

But, it was a good experience.