car hire, italy

[oneearedrabbit]

I need to hire a car in Italy this summer. Holiday Autos have the best prices but I don't quite get what they are, are they an agency for various car hire companies? When do you get to see which company you are with? Are they reliable to book through? and does anyone know a good place to get that comprehensive cover for insurance for Europe without paying the price when you arrive in the airport?

We booked through Holiday Autos when we went to Italy a couple of years ago, they are just an agency but everything was fine.

I did quite a lot of browsing on this for our holiday in Italy last year, as I was coming across a fair few horror stories. We flew to Pisa and booked our hire car through Avis. No queue, straightforward. They were more expensive than some of the other options, but worth the lack of queue and sense that we weren't going to be stung.

If you can, get a separate credit card to use for the booking and pay it off then close it as soon as you return home. Also photograph the car and its fuel gauge when you return it.

I once booked a car in Italy for my boss, using the company credit card. He returned it to the hire company in A1 condition and with more fuel in it than he had when he picked it up. A month after he returned it his card was charged with £400 for unspecified damage and fuel. I phoned the hire company on his behalf (best part of an hour due to my inability to speak Italian and their sudden reluctance to speak English, despite the person who took the initial booking being fluent) and they insisted that the car had been returned dented, scraped and empty, even though they made no mention of this at the time of return.

Lesson hard learned.

We've used Avis, Hertz and Europcar. All fine. Always fill up before you return it or they charge you way over the odds to refuel the car.

Use Holiday Autos if you want - but take a cancellable arrangement. If your car rental is with Goldcars, you need to cancel and get something else.

They are the worst car hire company ever. Queued for 2.5 hrs (when our friends who had cars with Avis got served in 15 mins) ,declared that our worldwide excess insurance policy was not valid in Italy , put a 1700 euro block on our credit card, and charged us 120 euros for a full to empty policy on petrol for a 1.6 renault megane.

Now we only book directly through reputable companies i.e. Hertz, Avis, Europcar. It may cost a bit more on paper, but they don't scam you and charge you for petrol.

Well worth getting your excess cover separately - somewhere like this www.direct-carexcess.co.uk/europe-excess-insurance/