Autovia Car Rental Reviews 241

My recent car rental with Autovia at Bergamo Airport was terrible and I would not advise anyone to be enticed by the low rental prices offered by this scammers!!
 I found the attitude of the assistant at the Autovia desk rather unpleasant and unfriendly. He was very slow in serving customers waiting because he was very insistent on taking on extras such as a wash service (never been asked before in all the numerous times I rented a car in the past even only two months ago with Autovia at Malpensa airport) and full insurance threatening having to pay penalties. When questioned on whether the car wash was a new requirement he told me it was because of Covid!! Covid?? What is it got to do with the exterior of a car and why in july when Covid was already rampant I wasn't asked to pay for the car wash?? Clearly just way to get your money!

The major complaint though is about what seems to be a common (clearly showing in the many negative reviews on sites and in the legal case for which Autovia was fined very heavily in 2018. Please see agcm.it under Autovia ) dishonest practice of charging customers for damage already present on the rented car. 
The inaccurate document issued by Autovia at pick up only showed one recorded damage on the vehicle when infact there were several already present. I took several pictures as there was no assistant present at the car park but despite my photographic evidence the same unpleasant assistant was able to claim that I was responsible of a 'new' scratch on the rear bumper which was with all honesty and certainty already present. Of course two day after returning the car I get a request to pay €383
for a light scratch I didnt even caused.
What's even worse while I'm still disputing the issue they have already charged my credit card. The replies I got so far from the complaint dept are ridiculous to say the least. I have now referred the issue to the European Consumer Centre in the hope they can put a stop to this unfair and dishonest practices. For reference in case you rent the same car and get blamed for damage it was a Fiat 500X reg. FX599AK and the damage was a scratch to the right of rear bumper.
SO STAY WELL AWAY!!

I've put off writing this review as my acutal carhire experience with Autovia/Ecovia Malta was good (at the time). Since my return home it has been a nightmare. Instead of blocking a €750 deposit at the time of rental they debited by credit card €750. The car was returned on the 23rd July with no issues and I have still not received my money back. I have contacted the company every couple of days now for almost 2 months and despite them telling me that my money will arrive there is still no sign of my funds. I booked the car through Discovercars.com and they can't seem to help me either. I'm so angry, they are disgraceful. I just want my deposit back!!!

Do not use this company unless you want a load of trouble...The car they gave us was an 83000km worn out banger...they tried to force us to pay for extras including breakdowns and taxes they couldn’t explain...Picking up the car was a nightmare and took almost an hour..Returning the car was almost as bad where they charged me 10 euros to clean the car even though it had been cleaned that very morning before returning it to them...incidentally it wasn’t very clean when we picked it up...This is probably the worst hire car experience I’ve had save an experience with goldcar rental in Sicily.Save yourselves the pain and don’t book with this lot!

DO NOT! REPEAT! DO NOT RENT A CAR FROM THIS COMPANY. THEY ARE STILL TRYING TO CHARGE US EVEN THOUGH WE RENTED THE CAR AT PERUGIA AIRPORT ON 15 SEPTEMBER.2019.
They are fraudulent. DO NOT RENT FROM THIS COMPANY. THEY WILL KEEP CHARGING YOUR CREDIT CARD AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY.

I was charged a ridiculous fee for a tiny mark on the underside of a returned hire car. I was charged for car cleaning when this was not in the agreement or talked about. And now a year later they are taking an administrative fee for a spurious missed toll payment that never happened and there is no notification of from anywhere else. This is a lying bunch of con artists... DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY

Won't recommend them at all.

They made us wait for the pick-up, and the tried to charge us for cleaning the car and filling up the tank (which we actually did before dropping the car). Also, they keep on charging our credit card months later with strange fees that they cannot explain.

Dear Autovia and all Future customers,

the company charged me nearly 10.00euro for the reason: Dirty car.

I was there for business, and the only thing I did was driving the car around the cities and countryside.
The vehicle, inside, was clean.
Certainly outside was dirty because it was snowing and raining, as happen during the month of December.

At the check out it WAS NOT written in Italian either in English: DIRTY CAR

I tried to fight by email for over 3 months, with no results.
It is not a matter of 10.00euros, but more of principle.

Regards

Stay away from this rental car company. I have rented cars with many other rental car companies but AUTOVIA is really BAD.
I was given a car different from the one I booked. The report showed damage to a wheel rim. It was dark, was I supposed to check if the tires were also damaged? After returning the car I was charged 313 Euros for damage the same tire whose rim was already marked as damaged. I'm sure I did not damage the tire.

On top of that I received a 42 Euros parking ticket that I paid on time to the city on January 7. On March 12 they charged me 60 Euros to handle the ticket (not to pay the ticket) that was already paid. They sent me an email and charged my credit card at the same time.

I do not recommend AUTOVIA.

Tied to Ryanair so what do you expect... More hidden costs!

So, website states for rental you need: Driving licence, ID and a credit card. I turned up at the desk and waited 40 minutes to be seen. Then got turned away because I didn't have a passport (I work at the airport and my airport ID wasn't accepted). So I had to go back to get my passport!! Website should say Driving licence, PASSPORT (not ID) and credit card. The member of staff was very unfriendly about the way he went about telling me this, and his co-worker just sat there on her phone. extremely unprofessional.

Passport in hand, now finally in a position to do the required admin, the fees on the paperwork did not match the fees quoted on the website. I had pre-paid for the booking, but the excess was 3,000 euro (2,000 on website) and the amount they hold on the card was in excess of 700 euro which they would return within 21 days of return of the hire car provided no damage... so here comes the good bit... for a lower excess and reduced credit card holding fee (200 euro) which will be returned within 3 days, all I needed to do is pay an additional 20 euro per day for additional insurance.

Initially I declined, but he tried to pitch the insurance even harder saying that if i'm collecting my car and someone bumps into the rental with a bag, or another rental car dings the door I will have to pay the full excess! I thought that maybe they would send someone to intentionally damage the car to get the excess, so I opted to the insurance... Clearly these guys are on commission!

So, got to the car, which was left in reverse (possibly, intentionally to bump into the barrier to get the excess??) there was sticky tape residue all over the windscreen and front side windows. As we were now over 90 min past initially arriving at the rentals desk, we just wanted to crack on with our journey.

Really horrible experience, absolute rip off and average car... Fiat Panda - website stated VW Golf or similar!! I usually go with sixt or avis and wish I had paid the extra £20....

Will never ever use again and would suggest others avoid too!

Everything was fine during the car rental, but after 3 months I started getting fines for traffic violations (already 2), that we've allegedly made during our rental period. These fines were so poorly documented without any photo, just a document written all in Italian without explanation. One of the fines was parking in a restricted area, which I know was not true because there wasn't any traffic signs stating this, even when I looked on Google Maps and sent them back the photo of the stated parking lot, they told me to contact the authorities once I recieve the official documents from the Italian police (which I didn't recieve ever since). They are taking money from my account and not even answering to my e-mals, or when they do, it's just the excuse stated above! If anyone has any experience with this and how to resolve it, please let me know! For my part, biggest disappointment, Autovia never again!