Sicily Car Rental - wild price quote differences

I can't answer your question, but it doesn't seem likely that one could rent a car anywhere for 17 days and pay only $200. That is only $11 per day. Are you sure you are looking at it correctly?

Regarding zero deductible insurance, it has come to a point that I always take it. And it has saved me money in the long run. Some towns have very narrow streets that are hard to navigate. Cefalu and Arles come to mind. Taking the additional insurance makes driving a lot less stressful.

I always waive the CDW. I rely on the coverage on my credit card. Also, my car insurance at home includes coverage for car rental protection. I think it costs me about $25 a year. You should ask your auto insurance agent at home. You may be able to get the same coverage.

$200 for 17 days?! That is excellent even for pre-Covid. If true, it is nice to see rental car deals are starting to come back. Car rental prices have been obscene the last two years.

In the past, I have seen substantial differences in car rental prices depending on whether I went to *.com, *.eu or *.ca. sites. I am in Canada. I even spoke with a customer service representative on the phone about the difference in prices and they told me that there are different company divisions for each country and they may book different blocks of cars and market different rental prices or deals to customers in different countries. There's nothing to stop you from going to a different site and booking the rental. Note there is even an autoeurope.it for Italy. I once used autoeurope.ca to rent a car for Hawaii. The moral of the story is that it pays to shop around.

For what it’s worth, on 2 Sicily trips, we’ve rented directly thru Europcar (not Autoeurope), and did not get the extra insurance.

About depending on your own auto insurance or credit card for coverage overseas, I would encourage you to study closely the requirements for making a claim. Do you need a police report? Do you need repair estimates?or what? Will you want to take the time to arrange for those for a relatively minor problem and damage? Will the local police prepare a report for you?
In Spain a while ago, I had a minor encounter with an automatic sliding hotel garage door, friendly disagreement about whether it was my fault or whether the door started to close as I passed it. Minor damage, but certainly a noticeable scrape requiring repair and painting, or a new panel. When I phoned the car rental company, and also when I turned in the car, they simply said: “No problem, you have zero deductible insurance.” I spent no time and no money on the problem.

You don't mention the time period for the quotes you're getting. My experience is that quotes for rentals more than a couple of months out are likely to be high and may charge for features that are normally free - like drop-offs in a different city. You get nothing for using an OTA like Kayak except more distance between you and the actual rental supplier. The same is true of most brokers, autoeurope being an exception as they add value in several ways. I would avoid any rental company other than Avis, Hertz, Europcar, Enterprise or Sixt - small new rental car companies appear with regularity and generate many complaints.

I can speak to using autoeurope.eu. We reserved through them in 2021 on a trip to Italy. The prices quoted were much cheaper than autoeurope.com. I was initially pretty nervous about reserving through the .eu site, but everything went off without a hitch. This year we are also renting a car in Sicily and I just booked through the .com site. For our dates it was actually less expensive (hmm...). As for the super CDW, we always opt for it. It's worth the peace of mind.

There are some things to be leery of when renting a car anywhere, but based on my experience, especially in Sicily. I felt that the Hertz personnel at the Palermo airport were exceptionally sleazy. Among their ploys was an attempt to get me to prepay for gas by telling me that there was no service station near the airport. There was one at the exit from the ring road, and another about a mile before the airport. Later, going through the paperwork, I discovered that they had done dcc. The paper said that I had agreed to it, but I wasn’t asked. The website given for complaints didn’t work, and Hertz in the US told me they were a different company.
Also, “no deductible” may have exclusions. I was once was about to take it on a rental, when I noticed that glass and tires were excluded. Read the fine print.
I have relied on my cc for insurance with good results. Again, it’s important to check carefully. I always get the most recent update on the terms by calling the cc company.

Thanks for all the advice, we will probably try booking directly and get the coverage. Up until now we had always relied upon our own insurance, including last year's trip to Crete. I was having second thoughts after reading so many posts on this community blog as well as Cameron's from several years ago. We spoke with our former Italian exchange student and she didn't seem to think it was any concern, she's a very cautious driver, and has rented in Sicily before to visit her grandma. Safe and happy travels!

In Sicily we did get the zero deductible insurance for the piece of mind and thankfully didn’t have any issues. I looked at what we paid for our rental back in 2018 and it was 1/3 of what it would cost for the same dates and type vehicle this year.

Recently booked with Kemwel (sister company of Autoeurope - websites are identical as is mailing address) for 9 days in mid May Sicily - picking up at Palermo Airport & dropping off at Siracusa. Needed an automatic and wanted peace of mind with zero deductible so both of these requirements increased our cost. We also upgraded to a slightly nicer car (for us) an Audi A3 sportback. Drumroll please, $920.

Also, not sure if you've seen this but here is a link to Rick's excellent "lesson" on purchasing auto insurance. https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/car-rental-cdw

As someone who ALWAYS utilizes the car insurance that's included with my credit card, I just took a look at Rick's "lesson" on car insurance, link posted above.

The section on using insurance from your credit card is generally spot-on. Only a couple things I'd probably frame differently are these bits:

To make this work, first double-check that your credit card does indeed offer this coverage (Visa, MasterCard, and American Express usually do — but not Discover).

Absolutely, make sure you card does provide the coverage you are hoping for (verify all details, and make sure you understand what you are getting, get it in writing, print it out, take a copy with you). But I don't think it's really true that Visa, Mastercard and Amex cards "usually" do provide this coverage. A minority of Visa and MasterCards do provide coverage; some popular cards do, but most cards (including many very popular cards) do not.

In almost all cases, the cards that do provide insurance have an annual fee. I'm not aware of any no-annual-fee cards that do provide coverage (there may be some, I just don't recall ever hearing about any).

One other bit that's not included in Rick's lesson: some credit cards will provide coverage if your travel is business-related, but if your trip is personal, it may only provide secondary coverage (ie your own home car insurance will be "used" first and the card-provided insurance only kicks in if losses exceed what's covered on your own insurance). There may also be some distinctions between the coverage provided for domestic rentals and international rentals. Read (and understand) the fine print.

Using the car insurance provided by your credit card is an awesome benefit. It has saved me many thousands of dollars over the years.