Avis Reviews 

Absolutely shocking !!

Picked a car up at Brussels Airport. I was reassured and told that due to the recent road closure on the way back to the airport drop off that I could bring the car back and a price of €1.6 per litre would be charged. This was on a printed poster on the front desk and I double checked with the lady to make sure that this would be the case.

We drove a maximum of 220km round trip to Brugge and returned the car back 5/8 fuel bars.

They charged me to a full tank of fuel of £70 !!!!! £70 for 135 miles. Absolutely disgusting customer service. Would never rent with Avis again. They sting you like mad. Avoid Avoid Avoid !!!!!!!!!!!!

Was given a car at Marseille airport with no fuel (after being reassured at check in the tank was full). Luckily we made it to our destination an hours drive away, but I then had to pay for 2x full fuel tanks and have not heard a single word from customer service in the last 2 months since lodging my complaint. For such a worldwide brand, they are the worst. Stick to the local car hire companies who want to do good by you!

Hiring a car from Avis Limoges Airport was a total nightmare from start to finish. Everything was made difficult and not at all customer friendly. The service was appalling and unhelpful. Payment, pick up and returning the car was a trial. & 3 days later I'm still waiting for the final invoice & for the deposit to be returned. DON'T USE THIS AGENCY.

Do not trust them. Deposit isn’t refunded and support never replies.

On November 17, 2025, at 4:30 PM (16:30) Montpellier airport , I was the victim of a deliberate scam orchestrated by one of your employees.
The employee in question was a male, in his early 30s, short, with pale skin and a heavy beard.
Here is how this employee scammed me:
1. THE BOOKING: I had a fully paid (196 EUR) reservation for a Premium/Elite category vehicle (BMW Series 1).
2. THE LIE: This employee refused my rental, claiming my driver's license (renewed in 2024) was "new." This was a BLATANT LIE. I provided an official government-issued Driving History Certificate proving my 9+ years of experience (since 2016). He arbitrarily rejected this official document, demanding an old physical card, which is an absurd and fraudulent policy.
3. THE PROOF: I have rented a Premium Lexus ES300 from another Avis branch and BMWs/Mercedes from other companies with these exact same documents. This employee was the only one to "have a problem."
4. THE SCAM: The real reason for his lie became clear: There were NO Premium/Elite vehicles on the lot. He sold a car he didn't have. He also refused my request to switch to an available SUV.
5. THE THEFT: He forced me to accept a Standard Peugeot 208 (a barebones car with no parking camera) and CHARGED ME THE FULL 196 EUR PREMIUM PRICE.
This employee (male, short, pale, heavy beard, working Nov 17 at 16:30) is a con artist who is actively damaging the Avis brand. He is running a bait-and-switch operation.

Very Bad service,
They are not paying back deposit amount and there is NO response from the customer service department.

So disappointed with Avis.

Our car had a flat tire and asked Avis what I should do, assuming they'd have a partner I'd drive to and get the tire repaired.

Avis on the phone, and the local Avis branch insisted we take a replacement car for the rest of our trip, and they would arrange the repair. That seemed ok, as it would save me a couple of hours at the mechanic shop.

Both on the phone and in person, and multiple times they said there was no charge. Further they didn't ask me to sign anything for the new rental.

We took the car, and a two weeks later had a 3,100 EUR bill for 5 days of this car. Obviously nobody would pay 3,100 for 5-days to rent a budget car.

I disputed this with Avis and they never replied, for over a month said "we're looking into it.". So I am now disputing it with my Credit Card as they said it was free and I would never have agreed to this charge.

So disappointing, I was an Avis customer for almost 30 years.

An unpleasant experience booking a rental via Ryanair with the Avis franchise at Limoges Airport. Our Ryanair flight was delayed but we still got to the rental office desk before the posted closing time. No-one was there. Other renters had been given codes to unlock key boxes but these did not work. Ryanair staff said they were unable to help as they had no link with Avis. After a while someone was able to reach the agent who returned to the desk. Those with codes were able to get their vehicles. We had not been given a code and the agent insisted for about 15 minutes that we did not have a booking, until he eventually located it and gave us the vehicle. The car was fine. A final irritation- the charge appeared on my card as being from Booking.com not Avis, so i had to figure out whether it was genuine. Meanwhile at the adjacent two rental companies, helpful staff were efficiently assisting their clients, including on the Sunday when we returned our vehicle. So other rental options are available at Limoges airport.

Charged for fuel despite me filling the car up before return AVIS Nice train station. Customer services won't respond to my emails. I have gotten one reply saying the fuel must have been at a higher level at pick up. This isnt possible as I refueled to full a 2 minute drive from the drop off spot. The fuel charge they added to my bill was even higher than the cost of fuel it took to fill the car at the petrol station. Shame because otherwise the service was fine. But hidden and sneaky costs are a no from me. TAKE PHOTOS OF THE FUEL ON PICK UP AND DROP OFF!!!!

Car was dirty inside and out, for example crisps all over the back seat, wipers were bad which was a problem as we had a few storms. Left an expensive item in the car. There is no email to their branch, you have to email the .de German office, there is a phone number if you want to pay international phone rates, not to have a contact email for the local office is ridiculous. I emailed on 2nd September, and received an auto reply. I followed up 6 times only to get more auto responders recognizing that they have my email. It is now 16th September, 14 days later, with no reply, so my chances of having my property returned to me is diminishing. Will I ever get a reply from them? It seems not.

This is the second time I have used Avis, my last experience was not good, I thought I'd give them another chance, it was a mistake.

They clearly are not interested in customer service at all. There are plenty of other car rental companies and therefore I will opt to vote with my wallet and select another company next time.

Update: 23rd Sept, I have now sent 8 emails, all received autoresponders, and no reply. ZERO customer service and ability to get my belongings back.

Update: 28th Oct, Called UK Avis several weeks ago, I was told they would email the office in France and have them contact me within 5 days, they could not or would not provide a contact email. No reply. Called back, spoke to a lady that was extremely rude and unhelpful. I asked her for information on how to file an official complaint, she did not want to give me information and told me that she would send an email to me, and I can reply to that, and she will forward it on (like that was ever going to happen) of course no email was ever received from her.

Last week i had a relative happen to be at the same location so they went in to try and get my property back, apparently they were very unhelpful and rude and they got nowhere with them.

Sent another email, no reply.

I think all my updates will continue to be the same. This is really, really, really bad company that does not care at all about its customers or your property. I am 100% done with Avis and I recommend you avoid. Btw They also own Budget and Zipcar. Payless Car Rental.

I have noticed in other reviews it is common to have problems with them replying to emails, they just don't. Looks like my experience with unhelpful and rude staff is also common.

Avis Toulouse - Charged us for some additional service that we didn’t ask for and didn’t get. They hid these charges by causing confusion when signing the contract.
On return I had to sign another form to approve the extra charges. When I challenged this they said there was no extra payment to make - all was paid they reassured. Two days later when back in the UK a charge on my credit card of €95 was made after all. Avis staff at Toulouse airport lie and treat you as fools! Obviously I will never use Avis again anywhere in the world.

We had a terrible experience with Avis Marseille. After returning our rental car on the morning of 09/09/2025, we realised we had accidentally left a wallet and a key in the glove box. We contacted customer service within an hour, but the representative was extremely rude, refused to help, and even hung up on us.

When we went back in person, the manager, Ben Diouf, returned the wallet, but €70 and £10 in cash had been stolen. The key was also missing, and since the car had already been rented out again, we had no way of checking for it ourselves. The manager was dismissive, refused to take our contact details in case the key was returned, and showed no concern for resolving the issue.

There was no apology whatsoever for the stolen money or missing key. Instead, we were treated with rudeness and a complete lack of professionalism. This level of customer service is completely unacceptable, and the fact that our money was taken makes it even worse.

I would strongly advise avoiding this location at all costs.

Charged for pre-existing scratch on a Dacia Jogger & €500 bond withheld, plus additional charges.

I rented a Dacia Jogger from Avis (Avignon Rail → Nice Rail, August 2025). On collection, I carried out a full video walk-around of the car before driving it. The video clearly shows the scratch in the plastic rear wheel arch, which Avis has now billed me for.

Despite having timestamped video evidence proving the damage was pre-existing, Avis has added charges for:

Damage (€161.65)

Administration fees (€38.33)

Immobilisation fees (€73.00)

This totals €272.98 for a scratch that was there before I ever got into the car.

On top of this, Avis has not returned my €500 bond, weeks after the vehicle was returned.

If they can't make margin fairly, maybe they should get out of the business.

This would never happen at Hertz.

I went with Avis with the hope that they were a reputable firm. In fact they're even worse as they rip you off and then don't even respond to complaint emails. We booked 6 days on Bordeaux (3164-1751-GB-1) and were charged an additional 300+ euros with no explanation. It feels like this is just standard policy. Is there any car hire from in Europe with any degree of integrity or even basic courtesy? Avis - another rip off.

Hired a car in Calvi airport, Corsica. 10-17 August. The lady at the desk in the airport was rude, slow, could not do her job, kept talking to her colleagues rather than us. Tried to charge us when I had paid upfront, asked for our driving license even though she already had it under a paper on her desk. Took ages, all other rental companies were processing 3-4 in the same time. The car drop off for Avis is miles way, long walk, 5 times further than anyone else. To top it off they tried to charge me €36 for cleaning 5 grains of sand out of the boot. Don't use Avis.

We hired a camper van from Avis Motorhome and van rental in Bordeaux. A day before pick up we were informed that we had to pick up and return the van between 9am - 11am or 2pm - 4pm or there would be an extra 200 Euro charged outside of these times because apparently this is lunch time. We should have been informed of this at the time of booking! We managed to pick up the van between 9am-11am however upon return we were held up as we had difficulty finding a fuel station that would accept our visa card so arrived at 10:45am. This was apparently inconvenient and we were unfairly charged a 100 Euro cleaning fee even though the van was spotless. Elodie the staff member proceeded to get a table spoon from the kitchen drawer and open the plug hole with the spoon in the shower cubicle and pointed out water in the drain, which was only visible once pried open with the table spoon. She also pointed out water marks on the shower tap and via Google translate told us the cleaning was not up to scratch. We were held to ransom as we had arranged to have a taxi waiting to take us to the train station as we had booked a SNCF train to Paris. She told us the handover would take an hour which also resulted in double the taxi fare, while the taxi driver waited. Elodie told us to tell the taxi driver to leave and come back in an hours time or that she would arrange a taxi for us, which we did not do as this would have been unfair to the taxi driver who we had arranged a few days prior with a van that was big enough to accommodate our bicycles. Our friends who had also booked a van and returned it later the same day at 2pm as they were flying out of Bordeaux said the handover only took 15 minutes and they were not charged any cleaning fee, even though we travelled together and the vans were the exact same in cleanliness. We are very unhappy about the whole process. It was extremely unprofessional!

Wrongfully charged my family for "damages" that were there when we picked up the car. No one was with us to check the car prior and my dad took pictures but they have yellow lights which blocked most of the damages that were there

We are at Nice airport and yet again the queue to pick up our pre booked car is horrendous. Judging by past experience here - because it’s always the same with Avis at Nice- we reckon the queue will take us at least two hours. It’s not just volume, they only have two of the desks manned….

I rented a car in Avignon from Avis that was supposed to be full of fuel. After less than an hour, driving only 30km (less than 20 miles) the "low fuel light" came on and I had to refuel with 51.75 litres (over 13 gallons). I complained to Avis whose "final decision" is that I signed a contract that said the car was full, so I would get no refund for having to refill the car after only an hour. As a point of physics it is not possible for any modern car to consume 13 gallons over 20 miles (equivalent to fuel consumption of 1.5 miles per gallon). But Avis don't seem to understand physics, just how to rip off customers. Appalling "customer service", and appalling abuse of the consumer.

Hired a car from Avis Limoges airport from the 13-7-25 until 20-7-25. All was well until I was given the keys to my hire car for the week. The car was an Opel Corsa and was in white. The cars condition was shocking-it was accident damaged, every panel had either been dented or was miss aligned due to being bumped. The car was not cleaned and you couldn't see out of the front screen for dead flies. The rear parcel shelf was hanging off and as soon as you started the car the add blue warning was showing and warning that the engine would shut down unless filled. I flagged up the state of the car with the rep handed it over to be told that this was the car and there were no other options. It gets worse, once the family were inside we set off only to find the washers don't work front and back which I found out eventually was due to the washer bottle being split. I spent 2 hours the next day cleaning the car to try and make it drivable however due to the screen washer issue we didn't do many miles due to the state of the car. What was even more shocking was the lack of interest from Avis when all of these faults and this whole experience was shared. The office in Limoges airport even after calling numerous times didn't offer and apology/credit even when faced with images/details. Their lack of customer care is poor at best and then to be told that the issue was not theirs and that we should deal direct with Avis customer care which when actioned we are still awaiting a response. To sum up I would tread carefully with this team as all of look forward to our holidays however dread the whole hire car experience from start to finish having to sign for everything be told of all of the risks and to take extra insurance and down payments for any damage whilst the cars are in our care. Its a shame that we couldn't do the reverse and charge the hire companies back for being miss sold and given poor cars that in the state they were in wouldn't be deemed as being road worthy. I am still awaiting a response from Avis having tried to reach out to them on a number of occasions.