Avis Reviews 

Avis Marseille airport rude and unpleasant staff. Scammed when collecting car june 2025 and scammed again now november 2026 more than a year later with unjustified claim. What a unpleasant experience so no more Avis rental here.

We hired a car from Marseille Airport and it broke down on the motorway a few days late, on the overtaking lane. I called the Avis assistance number to organise a tow truck but couldn't get through to them despite multiple phone calls. I had to organise a tow truck separately as this was a dangerous situation but Avis doesn't want to reimburse the towing costs. I have been going back and forth with their customer services ever since (4 months) and they are particularly uncooperative. No refund to date.

★☆☆☆☆ – Absolutely Disgraceful! Never Rent from Avis!

I have experienced what I can only describe as an absolute scam by Avis. AVOID THIS COMPANY AT ALL COSTS!

The vehicle I received already had damage when I picked it up. I noticed it immediately and reported it to Avis in writing via email, making sure there was a clear record of the pre-existing damage.

Despite this, Avis charged my credit card for damage that was already there before my rental even began!

What makes this situation even more outrageous is their complete lack of customer service and accountability. I have been trying to resolve this issue for MONTHS. My emails have been completely ignored, and every time we contact them by phone, we receive the same meaningless response: “We will look into it.” Nothing happens. No explanation, no resolution, no refund.

The situation has become so serious that I have filed a formal police report. That is how far I have had to go just to address an unjustified charge.

As an Avis Preferred member, I find this treatment particularly appalling. Loyalty apparently means absolutely nothing to this company.

In my experience, Avis has demonstrated a shocking lack of professionalism, transparency, integrity, and respect for its customers. Charging someone for pre-existing damage and then ignoring their complaints for months is completely unacceptable.

I feel cheated, ignored, and taken advantage of. I would strongly advise anyone considering renting from Avis to think twice. Even if you document existing damage and report it immediately, you may still find yourself charged for it and left fighting for your own money.

NEVER AGAIN. I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND AVIS TO ANYONE.

Avis, if you have any respect left for your customers, take responsibility, investigate this case properly, and refund the money you wrongfully charged.

Took 40 min to check me in even though had done the online precheck! Then i was charged unjustly 37.84 for fuel even though I put full fuel for 11-12 euro 5 km before returning the vehicle to the point of so full that fuel was leaking on the outside of the car. Yet they charged me another 37 saying the fuel was not full, I have never had such experience before , they did not even check as I parked floor 3 and gave the keys floor 4, had I known they would be so dishonest I would have insisted and dragged the guy to the car to mark fuel full! Disgrace! Never again renting with these people

This is specifically directed at Avis France's Nice, France airport location.
Avis kept our entire deposit and also added a further significant charge after we returned the car. We returned it with no damage, two hours late. But Avis had been two hours late giving us the car in the first place because they double-booked our car, and it took two hours for them to sort it out.
The worst part of this is that even though Avis Canada said they were sending our complaint directly to Avis France, Avis France NEVER contacted us to explain the very large charges - even though we tried to contact them seven weeks in a row. There is NO provision to contact Avis France directly - we had to go through Avis Canada over and over.
Avis France's Nice airport location cheated us out of about $300 (almost double the stated cost of our rental). Because of this, we will never rent from Avis again, anywhere on Earth. Good riddance to an untrustworthy company. Zero stars, if that is permitted.

recently hired a car in Glasgow, all went smoothly, would reccomend 100% after a bad time with eurocar previously

We always use Avis at Toulouse airport. We receive good service and the cars are reliable. We were there last week and had amazing help from Nicolas. He went above and beyond - professional, friendly and efficient. Car was great as usual and good return with Hanna.
Look forward to seeing Nicolas again - best Avis agent ever. 5*

Crooks that will charge you even if the car is returned in the same condition and fuelled, and not provide any evidence to underpin the charge when you request it. Absolutely do not use

Geneva Airport, French Side. Avoid at all costs!!!

Beware they are scammers. Guy on rental desk was nice, but you have to 'inspect' your vehicle in a very dark, cramped underground car park. It was squeezed in extremely tightly between two other cars. It is not possible to take decent photos or really see the vehicle properly. Received an extremely scratched vehicle with multiple damage points marked on the sheet which we cross referenced as best we could in the conditions and took some very dark photos were we could. It is also fairly dangerous as lots of cars moving in the area with limited visibility.

No issues with vehicle during rental, but on return we go to park in a bay as per where we were instructed to inspect the vehicle on collection. The staff member tells us to park it in a well-lit bay with empty places either side and pulled forwards so he can inspect it. He then accuses us of scratching the vehicle (we categorically did not). He says we have to produce photo evidence - the photos I have aren't great, but you can see part of the damage in the corner of one. I also showed him that the damage is marked on the sheet we were given at the start. He says the photo is not good enough and it is 'easier for you to claim on your insurance than for me to deal with this if I accept this photo'. I challenged this but he gave us no option - pay over £400 to cover the scratch on the spot. In order to not miss our flight we had to accept it there and then, but I immediately contacted customer service who advised to challenge and confirmed that it looked as though the scratches were pre-existing. I was directed how to do this and filled out the online form. Over a month later I have heard nothing back. I have chased and chased to no avail, via email, via phone and still no response.

I have insurance, so ultimately I will get the money back one way or another, but this feels like a total scam.

If I could rate them zero stars I would.

As an Avis Presidents Club Member I am massively let down
I have been a loyal Avis customer for many years. I always believed the car rental industry to be a bit dishonest but aways found Avis to be the most professional of them all. That was until my recent experience at Avis Lyon Airport.
On collecting the vehicle I noticed it was quite old for a car hire vehicle having done nearly 50,000km. It has many scratches and dents on it so I went back into the office to advise them about this and ask them to record it on the vehicle collection contract. The lady just told me it was fine and that this vehicle was ‘famous’ for that and to take photos and it would be fine. So, unusually for me when renting at Avis, I took photos and video.
My trip went without any incident and I returned the car. When the staff member came to inspect it he said that there was a new scratch on the back left panel. I could see a small insignificant scratch but the car had loads of them, all of which were not done by me. I showed him the pre-pickup video and the scratch he was referring to was so small it didn’t even show up on the video. So I took a new video and showed him the new video but didn’t tell him I had just taken the video. He was pleased to point out that the scratch wasn’t there (thinking it was the video from pickup) but then I told him I had just taken this video and he was shocked because the scratch didn’t show on this video either! Proving the point that the original video was not proof that the tiny scratch wasn’t there on collection!
You will see from my video that there is absolutely nothing there that can be classed as damage on a 50,000km car. The staff member was clearly trained to spot existing damage on this vehicle and record it as new. Perhaps that is why the car is ‘famous’ amongst the staff there?
My card was charged with 397.42 euros damage which is absolutely outrageous. I would have expected these type of tactics from other car hire companies but not from Avis. Needless to say I will be withdrawing my Avis Presidents Club membership and not using their services at any location again.
Interestingly, there is a fee for “vehicle idle time” whilst the car gets repaired. Look at the video. Do you think they send this vehicle in to repair anything? So they are claiming vehicle idle charges for nothing too. An absolute scam!
I hope people senior at Avis take this seriously. But I fear that I have just avoided the tactics for too long and eventually I have been stung.
I will, of course, we taking this up with Avis Customer Service in France. Following that I shall be taking this up with the European Car Rental Conciliation Service (ECRCS), and subsequently under Article L.616-1 of the French Consumer Code I shall be taking it up with the consumer Ombudsmen which is the official process if anyone else has a similar experience.

€235 paid. No car. No representative. No refund.

I prepaid €235.41 for an Avis rental in Auxerre and arrived at the agreed time with my licence, ID and payment card. There was no Avis representative, no car and no keys. I called the provided numbers but nobody answered. Another customer was also waiting for an Avis car, and the hotel receptionist witnessed the situation.

After months of emails, Avis claimed I had not provided the required documents and charged me a €65 cancellation fee. This is not true from my experience — I was there and was never given the opportunity to provide the documents.

After months of complaints, Avis offered €170.41, which I accepted just to finally end the matter. I was then told the refund had been processed. It never arrived. My bank confirmed that no €170.41 refund was received.

I have repeatedly asked Avis for the payment reference and proof of the refund. I still have neither my money nor proof of payment.

At this point, the whole experience is extremely concerning and has honestly felt scam-like: money was taken for a service I never received, I was later told I had been refunded when my bank says I was not, and I keep receiving generic responses instead of an actual resolution.
Very frustrated.

Avis Airport Nice

Unfair extra charge and terrible customer service.The rental car was delivered to me with only 94% gas, but I returned it completely full at 100%. Despite returning it with more fuel than I received, they still charged me an extra fee for not returning it with a full tank!I contacted customer service two weeks ago to resolve this. I even sent them proof, including a video of the dashboard and the receipt from the gas station, but I have received absolutely no response. It has been two weeks of complete silence .Be careful when renting from this company. Not recommended

I will never rent from Avis again.

Nearly a month after my rental, I am still disputing approximately €800 that Avis charged me, and I have still not received adequate documentation explaining or substantiating why this money was taken.

The charge itself has been incredibly stressful, but the customer service afterward has made the situation substantially worse. I have repeatedly attempted to get an explanation and resolution, and nearly a month later I still do not have one.

I have also tried to resolve the issue by telephone. I have been told that my case involves an international division that the regular Avis customer-service representatives cannot directly contact. I have been unable to contact this division myself, and, according to what Avis representatives have told me, even the employees I can reach are unable to contact the people actually handling the case. I am therefore left in an absurd situation in which Avis has approximately €800 of my money while I cannot communicate with anyone who apparently has the authority to explain the charge or resolve the dispute.

For a company of this size, this level of customer service is abhorrent and abysmal. A customer should not have to spend weeks opening tickets, making calls and repeatedly asking a multinational rental company to provide basic documentation explaining an €800 charge.

I have now disputed the charge with my bank, reopened/escalated my existing complaint with Avis, filed an additional complaint concerning my customer-service experience, and I am contacting Priceline, through whom I originally booked the rental. I am also prepared to escalate the matter through the appropriate French consumer-protection and mediation channels.

From my perspective, having approximately €800 taken from me without adequate supporting documentation and then being left for nearly a month without a meaningful resolution feels like being robbed by the company that I trusted with my rental.

I will continue escalating this dispute until Avis provides documentation substantiating the charge and refunds any money that it cannot establish that I legitimately owe.

I would strongly caution anyone considering renting from Avis to keep every piece of documentation associated with the rental, photograph everything, monitor subsequent charges carefully, and be prepared for an extraordinarily difficult customer-service process if something goes wrong.

Avis France is a scam! Please donot rent from them. I rented from them last month for 2 days. The handover was smooth and uneventful. However, Avis started charging damages which have not been explained. The customer service said that donot see any damage report. How bizarre! Then one month later, they put more transactions on the credit card. They put 2x charges on the card compared what I paid via Klook. Will never use this company again.

I booked a car for 26 days via Auto Europe from Avis starting and finishing in Barcelona airport. The desk in Barcelona had about 8 desks but only two, sometimes 3 staff present. There were probably fifty people milling around with a variety of tickets determining their priority to be seen. We finally got our car after about 1.5 hours waiting. The list of pre-existing damage consisted of about nine items, most of which appeared very minor. They recommend videoing the car before leaving the airport but the car spaces are so small, with minimal light that actually being able to spot anything was limited.

The car itself had about 69,000 km but seemed to run fine. We have put on maybe 400km and when we were driving yesterday, the check engine light came on and a message appeared in Spanish basically saying the engine had a problem and needed to be taken to a repair station. We contacted the agency in Barcelona and they arranged via their French colleagues to come and haul the car away. It was a bit complicated but both in Spain and France, they were very professional.

We were told by the Agency in Barcelona that someone would contact us for a replacement vehicle. This never happened, so we called back and were told that we should go to the nearest Avis location to get another car. There are three within about 20km but all of them don't answer their phones during theoretical work hours and don't respond to voice mails. As we will have to get a taxi or Uber to a location we wanted to make sure that the location we went to actually had a car. The National number in France for Avis "customer service" is controlled by AI, which is shorthand for " no service" and required a twenty minute hold to speak to a real person. The real person suggested I call the Avis desk at the train station...the one I had already called about 8 times and left messages saying that they were open, even if not answering the phone. My suggestion that he take care of us by doing the paperwork for a replacement vehicle and send that to the train office was turned down as "too complicated". He claimed that other than the telephone that the office does not answer, electronic communications take 24 hours. His only suggestion was just to turn up at the station.

So, as it stands we still have no car (which we paid for up front), nobody in Avis interested in taking responsibility and we are in the process of losing an entire vacation day.

For the most part, after sbout 45 years of renting cars, I think Avis has managed to prove to be the worst experience. Not because the car broke down, although that was also a first, but because they have no mechanism in place to actually provide real customer service. They, like many other large companies, believe that pouring money into Artificial intelligence and automated phone systems is something customers actually want. The idea that at moments of stress in a foreign country that customers want phone trees, long hold times and no actual solution is something only CEOs apparently believe.

Avoid AVIS like the plague.

Billing dispute unresolved for nearly two months – impossible to reach real customer service

I had a billing dispute after an Avis rental in Bordeaux. I returned the vehicle and key according to the branch’s out-of-hours return instructions, but I was subsequently charged for an additional rental day.

I submitted supporting evidence, including the rental documents, fuel receipt and location timeline. Avis acknowledged receiving the information and later told me that the case had been escalated to a specialist for personal review.

Nearly two months later, however, there is still no decision or resolution. Email responses have largely been automated or AI-generated messages that acknowledge or summarize the case without actually resolving it.

I have also tried repeatedly to contact Avis by telephone. Instead of reaching a customer service representative, I am simply left waiting on hold for a long time without anyone answering.

At this point, my biggest concern is no longer just the disputed charge. There seems to be no effective way to reach a person who will take responsibility for resolving the problem.

I have provided the evidence, followed up by email, waited for the promised specialist review, and tried calling. After nearly two months, I am still waiting for Avis to provide a meaningful response and resolve the case.

Extremely disappointing experience with Avis at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG), France.

I rented a vehicle from Avis/Budget at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and was due to return it by 7:00 PM on August 25, 2026.

I returned the vehicle to CDG before the contractual deadline. I have timestamped evidence showing the vehicle at the airport at approximately 6:25 PM, 6:27 PM and 6:35 PM.

At the time of the return, the Avis office was closed and there were no Avis staff present. I immediately reported the situation to the rental platform.

The staff member who handled the matter, Fatma Kade, told us that we had “parked in a public area” and that “the agreement was closed.” However, no clear explanation was provided as to how this established that the vehicle had been returned after the contractual 7:00 PM deadline.

Avis subsequently charged us €172.06 for an alleged late return.

I formally disputed this charge with Avis Customer Service. The complaint is now registered under Case Reference 31535465, and I have submitted my supporting evidence for investigation.

What I find particularly concerning is that Avis has not provided a clear explanation of the actual return time recorded in its system, nor the evidence supporting the €172.06 charge.

Avis's own official CDG location information states that vehicle returns are available 24 hours a day, including after-hours return procedures.

I am currently waiting for Avis to provide a substantive explanation and resolve the disputed charge.

My advice to other customers: document the exact time and location of your vehicle when returning it, especially when returning outside normal counter-service hours. Keep all photos, timestamps and communications.

Terrible experience – stay away!
I will NEVER
rent from them again, even if it costs significantly more elsewhere. I am also attaching a screenshot of their response as proof.

First, they charged me CHF 113 (almost the cost of TWO full tanks!) claiming I returned the car at 7/8 full instead of 8/8. But they didn’t even give me a full tank when I picked up the car — it was at around 9/10! In my case, I refueled right before returning the car, and even if there was a tiny difference, I don’t understand how that justifies a CHF 113 charge.

On top of that, they charged me another CHF 111 just for returning the car to Zurich Airport. I have booked through Booking.com many times and have never been charged this before, nor was it specified in my reservation.

Based on my experience, I’d think twice before renting from them.

Be extremely careful with what you are asked to sign at this Avis counter.

I booked a rental for approximately $1,500. At the end of my vacation, I discovered an additional $1,040 in charges, bringing the total cost to approximately $2,540.

What concerns me most is not simply the amount, but the complete lack of transparency at the counter.

No optional services were clearly presented to me verbally. No prices were explained to me. At no point was I told that what I was being asked to sign could add more than $1,000 to my rental.

Even more concerning, the screen I was asked to sign did not display any summary of the additional charges or their total cost — it simply showed a field where I was instructed to sign.

I was not given a paper copy at the counter either, so there was no document in front of me allowing me to review these charges before completing the transaction.

The process was simply: sign where indicated, then insert my credit card.

Had the agent said, “These options will add approximately $1,040 to your rental,” I would obviously have declined them.

I understand that Avis may argue that these charges subsequently appeared in the rental agreement. But there is a major difference between information appearing somewhere in documentation received afterwards and clearly showing a customer what optional products are being added, and at what cost, before asking them to sign.

As an international traveller, I trusted a major global rental company to make substantial additional charges clear at the counter. Instead, I only understood their true financial impact when I received the final invoice at the end of my trip.

My $1,500 rental became a $2,540 rental.

I am sharing this experience so other travellers know exactly what to watch for at this location: before signing anything, explicitly ask the agent to show you an itemised list of every optional service being added and the total additional cost. Do not rely on the signing screen itself to provide that information.

Based on my experience, I would not rent from this location again.