Decent enough city car, helpful staff, but Ancona train station pick-up location difficult to find.

Overall, the experience was quite good. The rental company's staff handled things very efficiently. However, there seemed to be a technical issue with the card swipe. Eventually, they manually entered the card details, so there was no problem with paying the deposit.

The staff at the Florence city center had terrible attitudes and were impatient. No one assisted us with the car inspection during pickup. When returning the car at Bologna airport, the signs were unclear. We drove to the airport's arrivals parking, went inside to ask for directions, and wasted another 20 minutes to finally find the return location. There were many customers, but only one staff member was available.

The wait time while queuing for the car was very long, and the staff's efficiency needs improvement. We booked a BMW 2 Series, but they claimed it wasn't available and offered us a POLO instead, unless we paid extra for a different car. However, when we picked up the car, the BMW 2 Series was clearly parked next to the POLO, which felt deceptive. The car return location was also hard to find; we returned the car at Rome airport and drove around in circles before finally figuring it out with the help of airport staff. Overall, we will not rent from AVIS again.

Due to COVID the pick up process was terrible - waiting for phone calls for over an hour rather than face to face contact. Fortuity the staff at the help desk realised this so reverted to a solution that worked.

P20