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Renting a car from the airport in Sicily

Don’t ever rent from EconomyCarRentals from the airport in Catania, Sicily on the internet. Big Ripoff! If you come a few minutes late, their partner rent a car company Intercar cancels your reservation, EconomyCarRentals doesn’t return your reservation money and then Intercar tries to rent you a car for 5x more than the original booking!

The other thing the Sicilian rent a car companies try to do, is sell you their insurance policy which is about 150€ for 4 days and tell you that the equivalent insurance policy for 4 days from Visa, Lloyd’s,etc. for €19 is not recommended.

Basically, it was explained to me, that if I bring the car back with a scratch, the car rental will charge me for the damage out of pocket and then I will have to get my expenditure reimbursed by the insurance company. With the Sicilian insurance you don’t have to pay out of pocket.

I decided to risk it and used Lloyd’s and didn’t have any problems. The craziest drivers were in Palermo.

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11506 posts

We flew into Palermo and rented our car at PMO. We rented with EuropCar via AutoEuurope, excellent service, attention to details, prompt hand over the car. There were long, long lines at the counters for local Sicilian
Car rental companies, chaos.

Posted by
27705 posts

Based on my observations as a pedestrian, I have been discouraging driving in Palermo since my 2015 trip.

I have no experience with car rentals in Europe, but I believe it is true that if you depend on credit-card-based insurance and there is damage to the car, you will have to pay for it up-front and try to get your money back from the credit-card company. That situation is not limited to Italy.