Advantage Reviews 185

We booked through rentalcars.com as it was cheapest. Next time we'll probably pay a little more and hope for better.
Arrived at Pisa and there was no queue so we had the comprehensive sales pitch to sell us the extra insurance as otherwise we would have to pay €1450 excess (this amount was reserved on my credit card anyway and paying €14 per day extra wouldn't have changed this). this was boring and time wasting but I had expected it and managed to resist this rip-off.
We were given a free upgrade to bigger car, thank you, and told to go over to collect the car that had no scratches or damage at all, but if we saw anything we should bring it to the attention of the man there. Having been ripped off previously (by Europecar) I knew better than to accept their word but I was surprised to find that the car was covered with scratches, some damaged paintwork, a damaged mirror and 4 damaged hubcaps. Maybe they just save money by having us punters do the work for them or maybe they would just have charged me for the damage if I hadn't spent 20 mins documenting it, either way that could have been better service if they had made an accurate record of the damage instead of telling me there was none.
Car was OK, hadn't been washed, windscreen washer didn't work but nothing serious.
On returning car the man barely checked it (apart from the fuel gage) (but did check the car before me quite thoroughly and found some damage that may or may not have been there before according to the user) and sent me off with the paperwork to the office.
Unfortunately there was a queue of people waiting to go through the insurance sales routine in front of me and each one took 20 minutes so with just one person on the desk, it was an hour before I could drop off the papers. Fortunately we had allowed 2 hours before the flight so we just managed to get the shuttle bus, go through check-in, grab a sandwich to eat through security, and then board with no time to spare.
Could have done without the stress.
Suggested improvements:
Offer insurance with a reasonable excess to start with.
Make sure the damage inventory is complete and accurate.
Wash cars
Fix minor issues (windscreen washer)
have separate pick-up/drop off people on the desk.
Thank you for:
free upgrade
Allowing us to return with full tank (instead of saying it had to be returned empty and charging a flat rate €110 to re-fill as happened to my sister with a different company at Pisa)
Polite and friendly staff.