Very simple: scam artists trying to force you to buy their insurance. I had to cancel my reservation and go to Sixt across the parking. Details: despite my very good knowledge of how the car rental industry operates, I kept being told they could not rent me a car if I did not buy their insurances... why? Because I did not have an international drivers licence (LOL x10...nice try!). They even said it's the ''law'' and offered me to go rent with the other car rental desks within the same space, knowing very well the other 3 or 4 desks would give me the same BS and that I would have to come back (the other desks were even worse crooks like Gold Car etc so I didn't even bother). What did I do? I crossed the sidewalk (across the parking) and went to Sixt. Saved lots of money and wasn't harassed for 1 second about the ''law'' . I ended up saving 180euros as I did not have to buy their useless insurance! Note: the look on the Sicily by Car's employee faces were absolutely priceless when they realized I officially cancelled and had gone to Sixt...(as it wasn't within the same office). read more

This was a bad choice from the beginning. I went with the online deal feeling I had triumphed in my quest to find the best online price and very nearly got caught with my head in my arse for doing so. Upon picking the car up in Rome, it was filthy and had tons of damage. I made sure to take numerous photos at pick up, to document, and insisted on having an employee in some of the photos as we did the inspection. I then had to ensure that all of the damage had been recorded properly on the inspection slip they give you... as I had anticipated, they failed to write down much of it. My response was to make the inspection employee hand write all of the damage in the very tiny description panel, sign it and print his name! I suspect this is a business as usual ploy to get you at the end for damages that you didn't do. When I dropped the car off in Sicily, the representative was very rude.. he then attempted to charge me for existing damage, ignoring the notes on the inspection document, and then got even more upset and rude when I proceeded to show him the photos of the vehicle from the Rome pickup. As he closed my invoice out, I was told this was my final bill, I owed nothing more and was fully paid. So I thought! 6 month later, Sicily by Car attempted to recharge my card for an additional $65! I have not received an email from them explaining why this new billing occurred six (6) month later, but it's obviously a very devious and crooked approach to catch customers down the line for unfounded charges, making it very difficult to contest. THIS IS THEFT, make no mistake about it. As Italy is such an infamously corrupt country, I doubt Italian law makers will do anything to reprimand this company. I have registered a complaint, but very much doubt this will go anywhere, until there is a critical mass of customers making the same complaint. Personally, I will never use this company again, and I hope that customer migration and a subsequent negative economical impact will force then to change... or die on the vine. I prefer the latter ;) read more

NEVER rent from these people. We reserved ahead of time on Orbitz (first mistake) and it showed the rental through Thrifty. When we arrived, we realized Thrifty had outsourced their rentals to Auto Europa / Sicily by Car. First, it took forever to wait in line and they only had one representative helping everyone waiting. When we were finally up, I showed the woman our reservation indicating it would cost 255 euros. She said that didn't include any taxes and fees (which it clearly said on our reservation that it did) and that it didn't include the GPS we had reserved (which it also clearly stated on the reservation). Without any other options, we were forced to pay the 350 euros they insisted we owed. Then when we went out to get our car, we were given a Smart car, which couldn't fit our luggage. The reservation was for a compact and even showed a compact car, not a Smart car, which is much smaller. After waiting in line again, they wouldn't give us an upgrade, even though we offered to pay more. We were stuck forcing our luggage into this go-cart sized car and had to sit with our knees on the dashboard and unable to see out the back window for our entire trip. After we pulled out, we found out the GPS they gave us had a small crack in it which made typing in the destinations very difficult. At this point, we didn't want to deal with them anymore (nor wait in their long line again) so we decided to deal with it for the next few days. Well upon our return, they claimed it wasn't cracked when they gave it to us and proceeded to charge us another $300, which we're currently fighting with our bank. On top of all of this, they also placed a $2000 hold on our credit card the entire time we had our reservation. The woman NEVER mentioned this when we rented the car so I gave her my debit card rather than my credit card. This meant that for the length of our trip we didn't have access to $2000 in our checking account, which basically left us with zero cash on the trip and meant we had to resort to putting everything on our credit card. They never once mentioned that "minor" detail when we rented the car in the first place, which ended up causing us major issues for the rest of our trip. In sum, never rent from these people or Thrifty for that matter for doing business which such unreliable companies. read more