Italy is a pretty cool place, as you might've noticed from all the photos I've been posting and blog entries I've made. With that in mind, we decided to try a road-trip weekend.
The plan was to pick out some notable hill-towns in/around Tuscany and just drive. We'd also booked an Agriturismo for two nights because that's something we'd heard about doing. An Agriturismo is essentially a farm-house that rents out rooms. Some are more luxurious than others, including pools, hot-tubs, and more. Others focus on the agriculture aspect and are working farms where wine, jams, meat, fruit, and much more are produced.
We opted for a small place outside of Florence because it featured an onsite dinner. We'd heard that the best part about Agriturismos were that they serve seemingly endless dinners for a flat-rate that gets added to the price of your room. We wanted that. The dinner did not disappoint, but that's going to show up in photos in a subsequent post. The whole experience was wonderful.
Before we left though, we had to go through with renting the car. The car-rental agency was called LocAuto, and they were a pretty cheap option, which is not necessarily the kiss of death, but having not heard of them before should've been a red flag. While we were at the counter it occurred to me that I should ask about tolls. Generally, in the States, tolls are covered by your rental company and factored into your trip or they're automatically deducted from your credit card. Not the case at LocAuto. Instead, the man working the desk ignored my question and the guy who actually gave us the car suggested it'd be something like 20 euros to get from Milan to near Florence. He was wrong, it was about 50. Each way. For about a 4 hour trip.
The fun didn't stop there though. In October I received a charge on my credit card from LocAuto, despite using them in late February. It was a $60 charge with no explanation, no attempts to contact me, and no detail of what the charge might be. Googling this problem shows that it happens all the time and they very rarely offer an explanation. Their Facebook page is littered with these problems, and most don't have resolutions.
In fact, here's a Tripadvisor forum about them performing odd/errant/unethical charges. Here's a whole list of them. The prevailing theory seems to be that there were traffic violations and the car company simply deducts it from your credit card. OK, fine, if that's the truth, but some of them include charges of $1000 or more with, again, no explanation. All of those complaints on the 2nd link are dealing exclusively with the LocAuto location in Milan, too.
The moral of the story is that you should just generally pay an extra few dollars to deal with trusted rental car companies. The car ended up working fine, but at a later date, we rented from LocAuto again (because they hadn't yet screwed me) and they quite literally didn't check the car when we returned it.They just assumed it was fine.
I promise I'll go back to sharing photos next week, and here's one or two to whet your appetite. Just remember that some things are worth the extra coin.
The plan was to pick out some notable hill-towns in/around Tuscany and just drive. We'd also booked an Agriturismo for two nights because that's something we'd heard about doing. An Agriturismo is essentially a farm-house that rents out rooms. Some are more luxurious than others, including pools, hot-tubs, and more. Others focus on the agriculture aspect and are working farms where wine, jams, meat, fruit, and much more are produced.
We opted for a small place outside of Florence because it featured an onsite dinner. We'd heard that the best part about Agriturismos were that they serve seemingly endless dinners for a flat-rate that gets added to the price of your room. We wanted that. The dinner did not disappoint, but that's going to show up in photos in a subsequent post. The whole experience was wonderful.
Before we left though, we had to go through with renting the car. The car-rental agency was called LocAuto, and they were a pretty cheap option, which is not necessarily the kiss of death, but having not heard of them before should've been a red flag. While we were at the counter it occurred to me that I should ask about tolls. Generally, in the States, tolls are covered by your rental company and factored into your trip or they're automatically deducted from your credit card. Not the case at LocAuto. Instead, the man working the desk ignored my question and the guy who actually gave us the car suggested it'd be something like 20 euros to get from Milan to near Florence. He was wrong, it was about 50. Each way. For about a 4 hour trip.
The fun didn't stop there though. In October I received a charge on my credit card from LocAuto, despite using them in late February. It was a $60 charge with no explanation, no attempts to contact me, and no detail of what the charge might be. Googling this problem shows that it happens all the time and they very rarely offer an explanation. Their Facebook page is littered with these problems, and most don't have resolutions.
In fact, here's a Tripadvisor forum about them performing odd/errant/unethical charges. Here's a whole list of them. The prevailing theory seems to be that there were traffic violations and the car company simply deducts it from your credit card. OK, fine, if that's the truth, but some of them include charges of $1000 or more with, again, no explanation. All of those complaints on the 2nd link are dealing exclusively with the LocAuto location in Milan, too.
The moral of the story is that you should just generally pay an extra few dollars to deal with trusted rental car companies. The car ended up working fine, but at a later date, we rented from LocAuto again (because they hadn't yet screwed me) and they quite literally didn't check the car when we returned it.They just assumed it was fine.
I promise I'll go back to sharing photos next week, and here's one or two to whet your appetite. Just remember that some things are worth the extra coin.
Comments
Post a Comment