Car rental in Sardinia - a positive experience.

flenk

I am reporting a good experience with our car hire in Sardinia.
Was researching in a paranoid fashion for nightmare scenarios before we went - many, many nightmares.
We decided to go with a local Sardinian car hire company called Autonoleggio Sardinya
(autonoleggiosardinya dot com)
who seemd NOT to have lots of nightmare reports.
They have offices around Sardinia and in all the airports, Olbia, Alghero and Cagliari.
Well I know it's probably not very moneysaving but we took out the extra insurances for theft etc. and damage waiver, which did cost more but we wanted at least some peace of mind.
The pretty new car (14k) had a couple of minor scratches and marks and a few scuffs on the wheel trims, which were also already marked on the rental sheet.
I looked all over to see if there were more that weren't marked (like under the front bumper, where a lot of people seem to get caught out on with unscrupulous rental companies/operators) and indeed there were a couple of scratches that didn't seem to be marked so I pointed these out to the lady and she scribbled something extra on the sheet.
I also took photo's of all the damages that I could find.
When we returned the car 9 days later (having had no incidents) at 07:45 there were large queues at some of the car hire desks but only one person waiting at ours, thank god, these queues are a recipe for disaster as the unscrupulous renters know you are under time pressure for catching your flight and can really take advantage.
As it was before 8AM none of the desks were actually open yet but the lady at our desk offered to take the keys and simply send me the final invoice, she may have been being kind but my paranoia kicked in and I said I'd wait until they were properly open so the car could be inspected and our unused credit card paperwork given back before we left.
(they didn't do an electronic blocking of a certain amount of money by swiping the card in an electronic terminal with me having to provide the pin for verification but instead used an older paper based system where you put your card in and some form paper and roll over it)
I knew that once I had that paperwork back in my hand we couldn't be charged any more at a future date (like a lot of ripped off people are).
The lady insisted I wait at the desk while she went to look at the car, so anticipating problems my stress levels shot up.
She returned shortly though and said all was OK, no problems, gave me my credit card paperwork back, gave me a proper end of rental invoice, I thanked her very much and off we toddled, very pleased, very satisfied and very relieved having taken only about 15 minutes and I did feel sorry for all those people still waiting in the queues.
So I would recommend this car hire company.
They were friendly and helpful and although I'm always suspicious of the smile on the face of the tiger, this time it was genuine.
At the time of collection I told the lady why we had chosen their company, because they didn't appear to have any reports of cheating their clients, she smiled wryly looking towards "Sicily by Car" (says it all doesn't it) and said that of the other renters she thought "Sixt" was good.
I thought the petrol prices were very reasonable at 1.4 to 1.6 euros per litre given that it's an island.
Beware of the drivers though, they do love to cut the corners and we had several very close shaves.