2023 ITALY – DAY 13 – CASTELLAMMARE DEL GOLFO (MONDELLO)

-- The Pros and Cons for today:

Pro: We picked up the car for today
Con: It wasn't a Fiat 500 Hybrid as we had booked 5 months beforehand
Pro: We got upgraded to a bigger car - a Lancia Ypsilon and it had Apple CarPlay
Con: After 2 incorrect PIN attempts on the credit card, the 3rd PIN attempt was correct but the card was declined as we had gone over our limit on that credit card
Pro: We had another credit card which was successful
Con: After driving to our first destination, we noticed an error on the dashboard
Pro: We went to Modello beach and had a nice lunch
Con: We went to pay for lunch and our credit card was declined; our credit card merchant blocked the card due to the unsuccessful PIN attempts and the over the limit declination
Pro: Lidia got onto the credit card merchant via the app and after a few messages back and forth they unblocked the card
Con: Lidia had established that the error was a serious problem and we were going to investigate a little further with Europcar roadside assist in Castellammare del Golfo
Pro: The host at our B&B was super polite and tried to call our Europcar roadside assist to resolve our problem
Con: Europcar roadside assist could not find our contract nor what car we had, and they asked us to give them the chassis number or VIN of the car - seriously?
Pro: They managed to find our car and organised a truck to come and collect the car, and organised a taxi to take us to Palermo Airport for a changeover car
Con: After the taxi arrived and took us to the airport for the changeover car, we had to pay the taxi driver and he gave us a receipt, and he asked us to inform Europcar at the airport to reimburse us for the taxi fare - Europcar stated that we would be reimbursed at Catania Airport after we drop off our car after 12 days, and to email customer support - seriously?
Pro: We got a replacement car, the same as the one we had
Con: The replacement car was a Lancia Ypsilon, but it was a lower model with no Apple CarPlay; we asked for the original Fiat 500 we had booked but Europcar stated that the Fiat 500 was a lower category car to the crappy upgrade Lancia Ypsilon
Pro: After approx 4 hours of stuffing around for a car replacement (that includes 40min taxi ride to Catania Airport, and 40min of driving back to Castellammare del Golfo), we had an excellent dinner and a walk around the marina and castle

What a day!

--> My stats for today: 11,380 steps; 8.1km; 10 floors