After waiting for almost a hour, they refused to rent me a car. They said that in order to rent. I needed an international license. Haven’t had one of those in 30 years. Claimed it was some law as of Jan 2026. I proceeded to Hertz and within 15 min I was on my way with no reservation!
Dropoff was easy. Pickup was not. It took forever. And the car broke down twice. We believe it may have overheated, but not entirely sure. Each time I called roadside assitance (that was prepaid) they were not helpful. Hit the SOS button on the car and that was slightly better. Was able to limp the car back to Rome but this was not a fun experience whatsoever.
It was not mentioned to me that you need an international driver's license. Reservation was cancelled, we are a family of four so major major issue..... managed to get a car through Autovía a local Italian car rental place where just lik le Europcar could have, informed me I can apply for international drivers license online and I did and got it approved and sent to me in PDF in 8 minutes.
The staff at the rental office in Rome were great. As was the person in the garage. The fact that the car smelled of tobaco and that there was a half smoked joint on the ground at the passenger side bothered me though. Like I don't judge, but still, would prefer to not have illegal narcotics in my car.
The pick up was really a bad experience we had to wait for an hour and a half because the system at Europcar in Rome airport was not functioning properly and although I went and complained to the staff that I see people came after me and they got seen and me no, they investigated and said basically system isn’t functioning properly today but still served 3 customers before me after admitting it is the system fault, and I also had two young children who just landed from a 6am departure flight! I found this very inappropriate as if it’s system fault and you could see I was there for more than an hour I should be the priority. The car we have been given was a Peugeot not the jeep I booked and I did say I want a jeep but they said all out but when we went to the car park I found many jeeps parked brand new ones, the Peugeot we got is old and the battery was bad not keeping any charge I was stopping every 50 miles to charge the car!! I asked for a newer at the pick up because I knew electric cars has to have a great performing battery if I am doing long drives, this is isn’t my first time hiring an electric car from Europcar, last year got one in Barcelona and the experience was amazing. I won’t recommend the Roma airport desk and would not recommend Europcar in Italy too
1st car, window on drivers side broke, 2nd car had a flat tire. No response from roadside assistance for over 1 hour. Car was towed. Took a taxi to destination €200. Their policy up to €50 reimbursement. Went to the Europcar rental agency that I should have returned the car, to close out my agreement, but they said now customer service will deal with the problem. They have not closed out my rental agreement as of yet. Between the rental, the deposit on my card and the taxi, so far a rental that should have cost me approximately €220, as of now over €900!!!!! Now my only recourse is an email the rental agency gave me to try and resolve the issue!
