Goldcar

I have never in my life experienced a more unpleasant and unprofessional service than with Goldcar in Bergamo.
Both at pick up and return, my colleague and I were treated in an extremely rude and unpleasant way by the Goldcar staff in Bergamo. We couldn’t help but observing that the same negative behavior was shown towards the poor Lithuanian couple who rented a car just before us. In fact, we have never in our lives met a person so unfit for working with service. The same extremely unkind and unprofessional behavior and attitude was shown upon return. Needless to say, if this behavior is accepted by Goldcar, we are more than reluctant to renting a car with this company ever again.
Additional comments:
When renting on line through Holiday Autos, we were informed that we could pay either with debit or credit card. As always, I carry one Visa and one AmEx card, in order to have at least one card accepted everywhere. However, we were extremely rudely informed by the Goldcar staff that nowhere in Italy are these cards accepted for car rental deposits, which is clearly not the case (I used my Visa debit card in Sardegna in August and in Rome in June this year…). In order to release our already pre-​paid car, the Goldcar employee demanded that my colleague, who fortunately possessed another credit card, paid the 3500 EUR deposit and when doing so, automatically added him as a second driver to the cost of 7 EUR.
When picking up the pre-​paid car late at night, in the darkness of the Goldcar garage, we happened to observe 2 damages on our rental car, a car that had been declared as 100% faultless by the staff. The 2 scratches were found using our cell phone flashlights to examine the car. Unfortunately, we did not notice a third scratch on one of the wheel rims.
In addition to being parked in complete darkness, the car had not been washed prior to picking up, making it even more difficult to examine the car and to observe any scratches.
The Goldcar staff claimed no responsibility to check the car prior to delivery, but claimed that the customer has full responsibility for examining the car, including marking all existing damages when picking up the car. I do understand and respect my part of the responsibility, but for the reasons stated above, our possibilities to carefully examin the car were severely reduced. I also claim that the agency has the responsibility to deliver a car according to the delivered contract and specifications, which was clearly not done in this case, with three damages on the car not noticed by the staff beforehand.
Without further discussions, we were automatically debited an additional cost of 360 EUR for the already existing damage on the car.
We have both rented cars regularly for the past 25 years and have never experienced anything similar.
AVOID!