UKC

Any recommendations, preferably with a pick up at Palermo Airport.
+ anything else I need to know i.e. hidden fuel / insurance costs...

In reply to Sl@te Head: No recommendation - just watch the 'bring it back empty' gag. Near impossible to do. Say they can have it back full and give yourself a few miles leeway, as the price the airport guys charge is high. The driving is fun.

In reply to Sl@te Head:
We used http://carhire3000.com/ and they were OK, but that was 2 years ago so things have probably changed. To be honest, most of the budget car hire brokers are pretty similar and use the same firms anyway.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-car-hire is a good place to start.

In reply to Sl@te Head: We had a great time climbing in Sicily, but the car hire fiasco was something else. My friend had booked on line with a company at the airport and it said that we had paid for everything, However when we got there they started trying to charge extras everywhere although they did eventually back down after about an hour of hassle! I normally book with the airline I'm flying with as that is the end of it and I have never had any problems that way. Whatever you will enjoy the climbing which is fantastic!

In reply to Sl@te Head: I recently picked up a rental car at Palermo. I booked via CarHire3000 and thy set me up with Maggiore. I got a free upgrade at the desk from a Panda to a Golf, which was nice. The fuel arrangement was "you get it full, bring it back full", much better than these ridiculous arrangements where you're supposed to bring it back with the same ~3/4 tankfull it had in when you picked it up. There was no extra charge for dropping off at Catania, either. Basic insurance was included in the rental cost. I always buy the additional insurance before I go, usually insurance4carhire or you can Google for others, or try comparison sites.

A word of warning: road signage in Sicily is bad verging on useless. Some places, usually the provincial capitals, seem to appear on every bloody sign - a bit like if Edinburgh appeared as a destination on every road sign in the Highlands. We got directed round three sides of a square one time, after I'd followed a road sign rather than trusted my hazy recollection of the way we'd come earlier that same day. We also got sent completely the wrong way off the SS640 on our way to Agrigento, an error which took nearly two hours and much swearing to recover from.

The poor signage was made worse by the fact that the only maps I could find before I went there were too large a scale to be any use for navigating in or near built-up areas. Due to a number of significant additions/changes to the road network, they weren't 100% reliable for cross-country navigation either. My advice would be to buy or rent a satnav, or if you have a smartphone you can use Google Maps (the latest version allows you to download maps before you set off, so you're not reliant on extortionate roaming data charges). Bitter experience also shows that it helps if someone in the car other than the driver can work said satnav/smartphone...

Oh, and if you're looking for a supermarket then they have a bizarre habit of having big billboards telling you that there was one in the town you've just driven out of. Go figure.

Driving hassles aside, Sicily is a great place to visit and the people are very civilised and friendly. The seaside village we stayed in filled up with young people at the weekends but there was no aggro, everyone was happy, sensibly behaved, and having fun without making arses of themselves.

I'm sure you'll have a great time.

In reply to Sl@te Head:
We always book through Holiday Autos, no hassling with extra insurance. Bring back full or pay for the filling, there is no fuel station at the airport but there one at the next exit after the airport turning coming from San Vito (Carini)and return to the airport or fill the tank at Castellammare del Golfo (the machine there takes notes).
If there are more of you then the good plan is one person (the hirer) goes straight out of the terminal and hot-foots it to the hire place while the others collect the luggage, otherwise you all wait for the bags, all wait for the shuttle bus and then stand in a line with everybody else off the plane to get your car. It´s about 5mins by foot to the hire centre.
If you arrive at night a torch is handy as the car park is poorly illuminated!

In reply to Sl@te Head: apart from Avis by prior arrangement you need to book/pay by credit card.

In reply to Sl@te Head: No problem with the car hire at all. Tank full to start, so it was full when we dropped it off. Driving was so much fun, crazy but somehow organized. Of course the three lane highway through Palermo can accommodate five lines, what was I thinking! The biggest confusion was paying for street parking; far too complicated to attempt to describe here. I loved the place. Interesting towns, nice scenery and Dolomite sized cliffs begging to be climbed.

In reply to Sl@te Head: Just a word of caution if you book through a generic company like Carhire3000, rather than a specific hire car provider... On our last visit, Carhire3000 booked us with a provider that wasn't actually located at the airport car hire compound (even though we'd booked to collect from the airport) but several miles away in the backstreets of a local town... No problem with the actual hire but a lot of hassle and fannying around finding where the place was and getting transported there after we'd already spent time shuttling from the airport to the car hire compound... Everything took much longer than expected - not what you want when you arrive late evening and still have to drive to San Vito...

In reply to Elevator:

Getting fuel is interesting.

In reply to Sl@te Head:

We tend to book with holiday autos - they usually specify all the extra charges and quite helpful should there be a problem which usually there isn't.

I have also got myself an annual total damage waiver insurance for roughly 40 pounds which saves you some money if you hire a car more then once a year.

Now the driving is a different story.....

In reply to Sl@te Head:

The funniest part was the bus ride from the Ryanair plane to the terminal in Palermo. After filling the bus, the driver circled the aircraft and dropped us off about 10 meters from where we started. A British bloke pointed and said, "Weren't we were just there?" to much laughter. The best make-work project ever? And of course for the return flight, which was on a Sunday evening, there was no bus so we had to walk the 25 meters or so to the plane.