Sicily (Palermo, Catania, Trapani) car rental without credit card and deposit? How to rent a car in Sicily?

Is it possible to rent a car in Sicily without blocking the deposit on the credit card? Yes of course! It is not as easy as in Majorca (as I wrote in the entry: Car hire without credit card and deposit - Majorca, Spain) but possible. However, before we get into the details of rental offers, you need to be aware of a very important thing.

Driving a car around Sicily

Get ready for adrenaline! It doesn't matter if you are a driver or a passenger. Emotions are guaranteed. In Italy, the nonchalance with which drivers treat the rules is well known, but what is happening in Sicily passes the human concept. Road signs are probably only used by tourists here, thus introducing chaos to the actions of the locals. It would occur to the village that someone seeing the sign "STOP" or "give way," or slow down (horror), would stop before the intersection. Expect that you will miss the left side with very surprised eyes. Anyway, often locals seeing that the car is from the rental company immediately know that you will slow down "STOP" before the intersection and immediately, preventively make a dodge to the left and rush sharply ahead.
Another example is even more interesting. Imagine you are driving through Palermo on a wide one-way road that has 3 one-way lanes. You drive politely in the middle lane and ... suddenly you see the guy 200m stop in front of you in the same middle (!!!) lane. He puts on emergency lights and goes to talk to a friend who is standing in front of his stall, trading some crap on the pavement. The car centrally collapses the middle lane. In panic I run away from the belt and brutally force priority on the guy on the left. I barely made it. I hear the horn behind me! But no! It's NOT ON ME !!! The guy behind me with a bored face probably didn't even register that there was a threat. Normally, someone (or me) just cut himself into centimeters, with a snout in front of the mask ... a normal matter. Sicily! Who, then, trumpeted ??? This is another friend from the car left. Because this trumpet is customary in Sicily greeting is! The type on the sidewalk delighted, waved a friend's hand, smiled and it's fun. I just dropped out.
After a while I was braking at breakneck speed because - this time in front of my mask - someone was escaping from the belt next to me. Wonderful! I thought: I'll hug him, what! The horn screamed furiously and everyone around… accepted my greeting, blindly waving his hand in a friendly gesture and smiling! It turned out that I am a pretty cool guy! I barely arrive and greet everyone on the street. Charmingly!
The whole works on the first kilometers after picking up the car on the way from the airport. I quickly realized that I was in an alternative world of traffic and from now on my eyes will be in the ass. And I swear there is no colored plot here.
You will come across such things for sure. They will not miss you. You just drive there and after 2 days you won't even be surprised when, waiting for the van for the exit from the roundabout, it turns out that the van that has entered the roundabout in front of you will not leave it at all. The guy just stopped at the roundabout and just started selling melons and watermelons straight from the car. At the roundabout !!! Me pier ... And that one lane is blocked? There is also a second… 😀


### important fragment of the text added in 2021, during the pandemic ###

Beware of pandemic car rental prices !!!

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned car rental prices upside down. The increase in car rental prices is huge. Official announcements say that the price increase is due to the need to maintain high sanitary standards. In my opinion, the strict sanitary requirements do not justify such an increase in the cost of car rental. What kind of growth are we dealing with? The 5-day rental I did during my trip just before the pandemic cost me less than EUR 70 (with full insurance). Today, for exactly the same rent, I see prices in the range of 400 - 450 EUR. Horror! Why is it like that? I am convinced that the rental companies compensate for a smaller number of customers with a higher price. One rental must now "compensate" for the reduced demand.

Is there a way to get high prices during COVID-19?

I have re-analyzed the offers of a dozen of the best car rentals and a few of the best price comparison websites. I found one common denominator. In fact, the prices are very high all the time, but drastically falling (by 50% or even more)just before the planned departure. The lowest prices are more or less 5-10 days before the planned departure and they drop to around 50 EUR for one day of rental, with full insurance option. Any price at this level or lower should now (especially in the summer season) be considered attractive (of course if applies to rental with full insurance). Advance booking 1-5 days is very risky and prices in such short notice often (although not everywhere) increase again.

Such price behavior in 2021 does not guarantee that the situation will repeat itself in 2022 and in the following years. So let's observe price changes yourself and choose the best time to book.

The offer of the rental company I chose and described below is still the best, but unfortunately it is more expensive than it was.

From comparison websites, I recommend that you look for two: Discover Cars - [click] and Rentalcars - [click]. They have wide offers, and at the same time have signed contracts with various groups of rental companies. Thanks to this, you check various offers from different groups. A particularly interesting alternative is here Discover Cars - [click]because it has contracts with many local, small rental companies. It is possible that some local promotion can be scored. The other comparison engines are practically a copy of what you will find in Rentalcars - [click].

All the other comments and advice that I have included later in this post still apply, so it is obligatory to read the rest. You will find my complaints there that 50 EUR a day is expensive, but I would like to remind you that this was related to the situation before COVID-19. We currently have a different situation.

### end of the fragment added in 2021 ###

Car rental in Sicily

The above introduction was made for a specific purpose. This goal is to convince you to rent a car from full insurance package (called SCDW for short). In Sicily, the likelihood of catching even an accidental scratch is definitely higher than elsewhere. You can drive carefully and just be unlucky, and it's not difficult in Sicily. By the way, I think that car rental companies should be obliged to rent cars only in a package with full insurance. Unfortunately this is not the case. For this reason, it is worth paying attention to the amount of deposit required (we will return to this topic later in the article).
A common practice in car rental policies is:
- very low price of the basic variant (to attract a customer, the offer is then at the top of the search results)
- high amount of the security deposit on the credit card (if it turns out that in practice such a large deposit on the card cannot be assumed, the customer is forced to take out full insurance, which causes a decrease - even to zero - of the security deposit on the card).

I found myself in such a situation when renting. I forgot that I used to pay for something with a credit card some time ago and when renting a car, it turned out that I lack the balance to set up a security in the rental (just part of the balance took the payment I forgot). So I bought full insurance on the spot to reduce the deposit amount (the required deposit for this option was falling from EUR 800 to EUR 100). It took place in Sicily. Finally, it turned out to be good, because as I described above, after a few moments I thanked providence for having full insurance.

A bit of peace on the street in Palermo, Sicily

Rent a car without a credit card and a deposit

Network rentals practically do not offer such a possibility. Recently, however, there has been some progress in this matter and a well-known rental company Centauro - [click] started to provide such a service in Italy, including Sicily (this option is called "Premium"). At the moment, it offers very decent prices and I must admit that the offer looks very interesting, and by booking in advance you often get an automatically added discount. Side Centaur is available in several languages, so when you go to their website, change the language to the most convenient for you.

The Centauro offer is also available through the car rental price comparison website DiscoverCars - [click]. Anyway, I recommend comparing the offer also in DiscoverCars, because often in the comparison engine the same offer is even slightly cheaper, and by the way you will compare it with the offers of other car rental companies.

Car rental offer from Centauro, at Palermo airport, for 7 days (May 2023), with full insurance and no deposit. Price below 50 EUR per day looks really good!
The rental conditions in the Premium option are simple, clear and transparent: no deposit and full insurance

Offers from other rental companies

Of course, the above offer may not suit you, or you do not have time to wait for an answer, or simply the rental company does not have free cars in the period you are interested in (which is highly likely with demand in the season). You can take advantage of one of the other rental offers. There are many offers. Total I found 24 various rental companiesthat provide car rental in Sicily, with pickups in different cities: Catania, Palermo, Trapani. I reviewed all offers in terms of the requirements for credit card deposits, insurance and personal participation in the event of an accident or theft. I systematized the collected information in the form of a table so that it would be easier to choose the most interesting offer. However, before I present the results table, I need a few words of explanation about the data that is in it.

What is a credit card deposit?

deposit is the amount that the rental company blocks on the credit card. This amount does not disappear from your card. It's still there, but is not usable.

Example:
Suppose you have a credit card with a PLN 3000 limit. You rent a car from the rental company, and in the conditions of the rental there is information about the deposit in the amount of 500 EUR. You pick up the car and the rental company will deposit a deposit on the card, in accordance with the EUR 500 contract. Your card still has 3000 PLN but 500 EUR * 4,3 = 2 100 PLN is blocked and as long as the blockade is not removed, you cannot use these funds. PLN 900 is available to you.

If you had a plan to pay with the same card for a hotel that costs PLN 1500, for example will not succeed. The deposit will be removed at the earliest about 24 hours after the return of the car, and often it takes even more than a week. It is worth remembering and it is best to pay for other obligations to have a different (debit) penalty or a correspondingly higher limit on your credit card.