Easy booking process, polite staff

I think that cars with automatic transmissions should be more commonly available for the same price. I get it, Italians like manual transmissions, but not all of your foreign customers do. Please, Avis, use better, larger signs to mark your office at Ancona train station. I selected a VW UP or similar, got a Fiat Panda FWD. The Panda is a decent enough city car, easy to drive and park and so on. However, it is comically underpowered for hills and highways, even with only me and my bags in it. Great fuel economy though.

The car wasn’t clean fron the outside and Inhad to wait for about an hour to pickup the car as there was only 1 representative serving Avis, Budget and 1 additional rental company + they kept advising on getting additional insurance on top of the one purchased from EasyRentCars claiming that there would be lots of hassle and admin fees in case anything happened.

Despite booking over a week previously so that Avis would have plenty of time to set things up, when we arrived they did not have our car ready (Merc E Class) and did not have anything comparable to offer. After calling their associates, the only available alternatives were a monstrous Merc G Wagon (imagine trying to park that in the land of the Fiat 500) for more money, or a BMW 3 Series Touring. We took the BMW. Then we were informed that the insurance that we'd already paid for via Easyrentcars would not offer adequate cover, and for fully comprehensive cover we had to book with Avis. Given that we'd already had a car damaged in a car park in Italy on a previous trip, we felt that we had no option but to comply with Avis' advice.

Shame that a company which has a slogan :"we try harder" provides just 1 out of 11 counters for pick -up service.

A pity that we have neither received the car we booked nor got a car from same category.

My expectation was to receive what I ordered as I got a confirmation from AVIS about the availability. When arriving I was informed that the only car available would be a FIAT - which was nothing like a SUV car (Jeep). As I received a confirmation letter, I did not surch any further. And that is probably the "trick" that they play with the customer. When you arrive in the morning you have almost no other option but to take what they "offer" you. What can one to - ofcourse I would like to walk out, but then you have to start checking other options, and that would probably take many hours - and then the day would be ruined. I know that this type of car (FIAT) was not the same price category. I was not offered an upgrade /the offered me a VAN - which I did not accept/. I was not offered a "good deal" if I would accept the FIAT. I asked for Mercedes cars they had (2 ea) but they were not willing to upgrade me - asking for more than double the original price for the SUV. /I saw only four cars, FIAT and two Mercedes and a Van/. I have never experienced that a rental would not upgrade a person when the promised car is not available. I was then offered a Volvo V60 - which I had to accept as I was not offered anything else close to what I ordered. I was informed that I had to wait 10 minutes for it. It turned out that I did not receive a car until more than one hour after arriving to the rental. No "sorry" from the staff about all this "blunder" on their behalf. Just stating that the "computer" sent out the confirmation - like AVIS was just "free" therefore! (The person servicing me did not speak English - which was not helping, but one can of course not expect that at a small local rental, and that was not any issue). The car had not been washed - it was dirty inside/out. The car was "ok" though, but not a SUV as called for. This was not a good start on the day for me.