Sao Miguel easier to drive

Terrible experience. We booked a car for 12pm, but did not receive a car until after 14.30pm. 2.5 hours of waiting with 8 other people who had also booked cars with Ilha Verde that were not available. This was so frustrating, and I had 2 small children that were going nuts in the airport trying to wait. And we had to wear our face masks the entire time, unable to breathe in the hot airport terminal. After 2 hours of waiting and not getting any information from the representative, another employee came to tell us the owner had been trying to save money by cancelling the insurance on some cars during the pandemic, so they were waiting for cars to be be returned and cleaned before they could be given to us. Terrible experience, would never book a car with them again.

It was all very good except for the 10 euro paid on collection for cleaning. I don't remember there being any mention of it before. The overall price would still have been extremely good but little hidden charges are so annoying and disappointing. There was a large scratch under the front of the car. This was not marked on the existing damage sheet. However, it turned out they did have a record of the damage, so that was OK but a worry for a while.

We did have to wait in a long line to pick up the car.

We needed to switch drivers and if we had booked directly with Ilha Verde we could have done that without an additional charge.

Friendly staff

The car we got was a Nissan micra, barely drivable because the clutch was going. We got charge in the end $10 EURO because we didn’t vacuum the car which they never mentioned we were suppose to do.