For my first rental car experience in Italy, yes I am brave!, I chose to fly into a "smaller" airport and pick up my rental car with a well-known brand such as Hertz. (Also helps that I'm a Hertz Gold card member.... but in the states I end up renting my cars with other companies due to lower rates and corporate requirements.) However, I can happily say that not only did I choose Hertz because of the brand-name -- their online prices in Genova were better than other large-name rental car brands. (By A LOT!) When you collect your keys, the Hertz counter can be found inside the airport on the main floor after you collect your baggage. There are a ton of rental car companies, so you can't miss Hertz. Service was friendly, and extremely quick. (Maybe too quick?) They didn't ask if I needed a map or anything, and basically just told me in Italian that my car was outside. The car I reserved online was the exact make and model that I reserved -- a Fiat Panda. (In Italy all cars are small, so you may as well just save yourself some money and reserve economy.) After about 20min of learning how to get the car into reverse, I was off. The car was fine for my entire journey - - no issues at all. Well, there was no AUX port - - that would've been nice for my iPod. (Luckily I had a Jambox with to listen to some of my music inbetween the local radio stations.) I don't really think there was much of a "Gold experience" here, so nothing to comment there. Easy to return back to the airport. If you go through the round-about of the airport, you'll find a Total petrol station north of the airport to refuel. (Recommendation: use cash, not a credit card though - - just in case the machine sucks in your card. That would be a bummer of a delay to the airport.) Just dropped off my keys to the desk attendant -- and that was it. Easy. read more

WERE CHARGED FOR THE SERVICE WE DIDN"T ORDER AND DIDN"T KNOW ABOUT We rented a car Reno Cleo with Hertz on the 8 of July 2016 in Genova Airport (Italy). We returned it on the 18 of July 2016 in Termini station, Rome, Italy. We reserved the car in advance and paid most part of the amount. So the amount left to pay was 71 GBP as we are residents of UK and paid for the car in local currency. When we picked a car in the airport we asked *specifically* at the counter that we DON'T need any additional insurances or services and so on. I've showed her the printed email confirmation. We stressed that we were happy with the basic franchise for a car provided. The person at the counter at Genova Airport spoke mostly Italian. But I tried to outline that we want only services that were ordered online!!! The person told us that in this case if we provide the fuel we'll pay 71 GBP (which was mentioned in the email confirmation) when the car is returned. While returning the car back I asked again how much we are going to be charged. And the Hertz employee who got the car back said he was not sure as it is done automatically. However according to the bill we received on 20 of July 2016 we were charged 156 GBP which is much more than we have in the email confirming the reservation. This is a very disappointing experience. I used to take cars from a few other companies before. And there were also a lot of positions with the different additional services. But when booked and paid online nothing extra appeared in the bill at the pick up/drop off points. I would expect that if you book everything online in advance and even pay basically most of the amount you won't be charged extra especially if you mention it. The support service refused to do anything about the situation. They just said that the service was added on their system, sorry and deal with it. I probably don't speak Italian and I am bad at currencies. But I expect the international company employees to speak English and I usually trust people. Just don't use Hertz ever! Pay for the things you know about! By the way we found significant scratches while checking the car (before taking it) that were not documented . Could have been charged for that too, I guess, if we didn't notice it early. read more

We had an emergency with our Swiss-rented Hertz car which got us stranded on a rickety skyway 40 feet above ground level during Genoa rush hour. After a harrowing rescue, we were towed here just before closing to exchange cars. They couldn't have made the process any easier. We got a better car and were on our way within 30 minutes. Bravo, Hertz! read more