Slovenia rental car and travel insurance questions

The highly-recommended company that brokers car rentals for the big rental agencies—Hertz, Avis, Sixt, Budget etc— is AutoEurope. They primarily offer cars at airports, but also at the train stations and at locations in large cities.
I’ve rented through AutoEurope in several countries and have never had a problem. Auto Europe has great customer service and if you arrange the rental through them, the agencies behave. They really would not want to lose their contracts with AutoEurope.
I use Generali Global Assistance for travel insurance, which Forbes rates as being in the top five of American travel insurance companies.
You can see what various companies offer at www.InsureMyTrip.com
www.AutoEurope.com is the site for that company.

If you go by reviews and comment sections, every company and every rental location sounds like the most awful place with the most awful people. Obviously, there’s some truth in there, but it’s also a matter of selection bias right? Very few people will take the time to write a positive review, while blasting their frustrations into the internet feels like their only chance at justice. People are people everywhere. I’m sure there are unscrupulous people out there, and it’s just as possible the customer had things wrong and were being unreasonable. It’s just something we have to come to terms with.

Just to say, there’s not a golden path through renting a car. Best you can do is be prepared, be clear and be cool. That said, I’ll be dealing with this in a week’s time so I’ll be sure to check back in if I get screwed over lol.

We rented from ATET in Ljubljana and were pleased with their service. Their pricing and insurance coverage choices were well explained through our emails and there were no surprises on pickup. We wanted an automatic that would comfortably fit four adults and ATET had the model we wanted at the best price with full coverage. They add an up-charge for pick up or drop off at the airport vs their downtown location.

As their downtown office was not walkable for us, we ordered a cab (about $12) to take us to their location for pick up. Then we dropped off at the airport the day of our flight home.

Major car rental companies won't scam you. However, they may be very particular about
the provisions in the contract, and if you haven't done your research/don't pay attention
then if something bad happens you may think you were scammed.

For instance:
- know what, if any, rental car insurance coverage comes from the credit card you plan to use
- make sure you take pictures of the car before you take it out, and, if you return to an unattended
location, when you return it
- know your routes and where you're allowed to take the car
- know if the car is equipped to automatically pay tolls or if you have to handle that yourself
- know the charges if you go past your return time, and for things like dropoff at a different location
than pickup

Also, no one ever writes a (horror) story about something that goes right. Just to point out
that the vast majority of transactions are smooth, and that there usually two sides to any story
that can appear one-sided when one of the parties is writing it.

I don't do travel insurance, but, when I have looked into it, it seems that travel insurance is not
geared towards self-planned trips when components may be booked separately and at different
times. I think this is not a Slovenia-specific question and so you might want to post it again in a
less country-specific section of the forum.

#1 Piece of Advice: Be sure to photograph the outside and inside of the car you rent before driving off the rental lot—no matter what car rental company you rent from.

Then you have time-stamped proof of the condition of the car— dents, scratches, pitted windshield, scraped tire sidewall, and all—when you first took possession of it.

We rented for a week in Slovenia last year, through AutoEurope, and had a good experience. We picked up the car at the airport, and were scheduled to return to the airport but were able to call to change and return in Ljubljana instead. I agree with the recommendation that going through AutoEurope should be positive - have rented with them many times in several countries.

For travel insurance I find the website squaremouth.com easy to use to compare policies, select, and buy. That is the site I use for travel insurance for each trip. I've only once need to file a claim and it went smoothly (directly with the insurer, but squaremouth offers support if needed).

Hi Susan, we just got back from a 16 day trip to Slovenia where we rented a car for 10 of those days. The car rental was a decent source of worry for me before we left for similar sounding reasons that you are experiencing. To be quick: it went really well, no horror stories here.

Details:

We rented through AutoEurope via Sixt. We picked up the car in Portoroz and dropped it off at the Ljubljana downtown location. Sixt does not seem to charge a fee for the different pickup-dropoff option within Slovenia. At least with Sixt, I cannot imagine it matters which location you pick up at and drop off at. I say go with the ones that are easiest for you. We walked to our centrally located lodging after dropping the car off. It was about a 20 minute walk, maybe less.

Caveat:
Because we didn't want to have to deal with our credit card company and who knows what else in case of accident or damage, we opted to pay for the $0 deductible and additional windshield and tire coverage at the Sixt counter. We felt like being able to hand the keys back and walk away was worth the money.I will warn you that this added an additional $631 USD to our cost. The rental itself was $250 USD.

That said, when I was trying to figure out what insurance costs would be prior to our trip, it certainly looked like I could have booked through the Sixt.si website instead of AutoEurope (which would not let me purchase insurance) and spent about half or less of that amount. Now that our trip is over, I'm not sure what the benefit was to booking via AutoEurope, especially because everyone we encountered in Slovenia spoke wonderful English. If we were booking the trip now, knowing what I know, I think we'd just use the Sixt.si website. I might be missing something in my understanding, so take my info with a grain of salt!

Carly,
Thanks for that great information. Very helpful. I looked at the Sixt website and by adding the Zero deductible coverage (most expensive coverage offered on their website) it adds about $480 to the cost. Is there any other coverage beyond this that they will try to upsell at pickup time? It includes undercarriage, windshield, tires, etc but does not specifically mention scratches on the car. These minor scratches seem to be the things most commonly charged to the renter upon return of the vehicle. Don't want to spend the extra $480 if they are just going to try to scam me on some bogus scratches.

Please advise.
Thanks,
Susan

If memory serves, with the $0 deductible coverage, scratches are covered. They also had a little tool with I think a 2 centimeter circle and if something was within the circle, it didn't count against you. He brought it out when I was going over the car before driving off the lot, and then reminded me our coverage would protect us even if a scratch was bigger than the tool. I'd double check that information in person when you pick up the car, but yes, the high coverage cost wouldn't make sense if scratches still count against you.

We didn't get the interior insurance package, which the Sixt man said is usually recommended only to families. I still used a wet wipe to clear a few really minor dust/dirt spots on the inside of the doors, just to be safe.

I was wondering the same thing. We are going a few days before our Best of the Adriatic trip starts in mid-August. We want to rent a car for just one day to go to the Skocjan Caves and Lipika. We are going on Sunday, since there is no performance (or practice) at Lipika on Mondays. Most of the car rental places in downtown Ljubljana are either closed Sundays or are only open for a few hours in the morning. Sixt is the only one that appears to open to pick up a car at 8 am and return it that evening. I've seen some horror stories in reviews. I also checked arranging through booking.com and their review ratings for Sixt in Ljubljana are much better. Wondering if it's like previous comments about Europcar, that there are less likely to be scam charges for damage if we don't rent directly.