I rented an Avis car from the Naples Central Station location (VW Polo, reg no FD 811YL, date of rental 16 to 21 Sep 2016). The car was ready on my arrival, which is good, though wet outside and filthy inside. The messy process of taking delivery was to do with the configuration of the Naples location, not with Avis. But after that...

On day 1 the tyre pressure monitor showed loss of pressure. After checking at three locations I concluded that it was a monitor malfunction. I drove for the next five days with the tyre pressure warning showing, and a nagging discomfort that it may be correct, after all.

The GPS (a portable Garmin unit, not fitted in the car) was a nightmare:

1. Driving from Sorrento to Ercolano, it sent me at one point on to a 'road' that was really a passage just about wide enough for a VW Polo with the wing mirrors folded. This was for between 1.5 and 2 km. I turned around and reset the GPS twice, but when it brought me back to the same place each time I braved it. I later learnt this was a restricted (as in not for all) passage, and I should not have been there at all.

2. Driving back from Ercolano the GPS told me, after passing through a toll gate, to take the exit to Portici. When I did that it brought me back to the same toll again. Being unfamiliar with the territory, I didn't realise I was back in the same place: it was only the fourth time that I did! After going through the same toll for the fifth time I ignored the exit instruction and carried on straight, whereupon the GPS recalculated and rerouted me.

3. Driving from Sorrento to Naples airport, it once again sent me to the restricted passage. Driving on it I was stopped by another motorist, hooting from behind, who told me I had no business being there. When I told him the GPS had sent me there he told me to ignore the GPS and get out. This was at a point where I had to take a very difficult left turn, but thankfully there was a little room at the turn so, with considerable difficulty, I manoeuvred my way out and back down the passage. This time, mercifully, the GPS quietly recalculated the route and sent me on the way it should have in the first place.

I wanted to give report this directly to Avis, but they seem to have no provision for customer feedback!

This is an issue common to all the navigation devices. While they don't all exhibit the problem in same way, they all behave brain dead at times. It is up to the user to validate if the recommended routing makes sense to the humans. You are dealing with a soul-less machine. It to be used in relevant context.

Well, chintamanirao, you just registered at Fodor's just to post your complain about AVIS.

In fact, not AVIS is blame, but if someone is to blame, it is Garmin.

Or, even more accurately, the Sorrentine Peninsula and Italy in general.

The Sorrentine Peninsula is regarded as so attractive by many tourists because there are many very narrow, windy roads providing spectacularly scenic drives. If you choose such a destination for your trip, better be prepared. The good old map would have helped you more than any GPS in this terrain.

If you had been a long-term user of this forum you would have read this recommendation many times.

Secondly, Garmin is an U.S. based company and makes GPS systems which work beautifully in America, where the structure of roads is different from Europe, whereas it has its limits in Europe. On the other side, European GPS systems work better in Europe but not so good in America. So, why did Avis provide a Garmin GPS in Italy? Probably, because they have a general contract with Garmin.

I have also written about this here on this forum many times.

Thirdly, GPS systems are dinosaurs, prone to extinction. Today, we use our smartphone apps, e.g. Here or Google Maps. We also write regularly about this here on this forum.

Conclusion:

Better learn your lessons before you start your trip than complaining afterwards. This forum is a most valuable resource. Make the best use of it.

And write a letter to Mr. Trump and ask him to wipe off Italy from the world map. And the rest of Europe, too. His buddy, Mr. Putin, will happily assist him.

5 times at the same toll. No small feat.

There exists paper things that folds. These are called maps. They can be handy instead of trusting blindly a device that usually works well.

As for the restricted road there are options on most GPS - I guess on Garmin - to disable such road proposals.

Next time bring your own GPS.

I used a Garmin in Italy and had absolutely NO problems. I'm sorry, but this generalization that the road structure in Europe is so "different" that it totally confuses a satellite-based navigation system seems a but far-fetched.

>> far-fetched <<

I speak from experience. Take England. There is a little town called called Knowstone (which would be insignificant unless it had a Michelin-starred little restaurant where we once ate an excellent crab salad and an outstanding Exmoor steak). We wanted to drive back to Woolacombe from Knowstone and used our Garmin. It guided us on a little road into a valley and said "Turn right on A361". Yes, A361 is the motorway to Woolacombe. But it was 30 metres above our road in the bottom of the valley. Garmin has interpreted an overlay as a junction.

We had to switch off the Garmin and take out the good old map and look for road signs. No big stuff and no reason to write a letter of complain to the Queen, but it shows that road structure matters, satellite-based or not.

Also, Garmin has problems to identify places, especially in France where you have dozens of towns named "Saint Pierre". Oh, I forgot England. Try to find "Rectory Road" in Oxford!

We have two Garmin GPS systems. Why did we buy the second one after we discovered the failures of the first one? Because we used it for trips to North America. And there, the Garmins worked absolutely faultless.

But this is a discussion of the past. We do not use the Garmins any longer (although I have lifetime map updates). Smartphone apps work much better - at least in Europe and in Africa (I have not checked other continents so far).

Dukey, you haven't got very far off the autostrada, have you.

There's a road in our town that's becomes very narrow, barely wide enough for a motorcycle. And yet truck drivers often find themselves on that road, directed by their Garmins or their Tom-Toms or whatever.

We went to a truffle festival last year some distance from where we live. At one point, we found ourselves on a road where we had to dodge boulders, crevices, and rockslides. At the festival, we got into conversation with a couple from the town next to where we live. The other man asked us what route we took, and when we told him, he said, "Oh, you used the Garmin, too, I suppose." Actually, I had told my husband that I saw a sign pointing to our destination by a different road, but he trusted his Garmin more than me.

We also heard of a town near us where the GPS directed somebody down a street that had steps.

It's not specific to Garmin, Tom-Tom has the same problems, and so does Google, but maybe to a lesser extent. Google has certainly sent us down some strange roads.

Our grandson used to like to have us turn on the Garmin and Google at the same time so he could hear them disagreeing.

We've been sent to the location of a petrol station by an in-car nav system and ended up in the middle of a cultivated field.

We've been sent the wrong direction on a one-way road by Google maps on a cellphone.

We've also ventured to places we wouldn't have tried to reach without GPS (Tomtom).

Technology isn't perfect, and that includes whatever you access on your cellphone. We always take paper maps as back-up and generally verify/follow the instructions as we go along.

The problem isn't the road system and certainly isn't Avis. It's the insular ignorance of far too many Americans.

So insular, indeed, they've clearly never even been to New York.

GPS is unreliable for directions in lots of circumstances, but three in particular:

- The technology - whoever makes it - often just simply doesn't work at all, including under dense foliage, when surrounded by cavernous buildings or in much undulating countryside. Some GPS systems simply can't find a signal in much of lower Manhattan, for example.

- The response time for signals, allowing for their bouncing, is often too slow for decision-making when driving through a dense network of roads. This is a particular problem driving through cities with tall buildings but medieval street patterns - like London or Naples - but often crops up while navigating European suburbia.

- Keeping devices' software updated is a far more unreliable process in countries continuously investing in new road infrastructure than in those that have adopted the current American fad of letting the country decay. Encountering a road that wasn't there a year ago is common in Europe: few Americans are old enough to remember road building any more. This problem varies both by system, and by owners' reliability at keeping individual applications updated. One way of minimising it is to bring your own system, ensuring it's up to date for the country concerned, rather than rely on a car hire company to update software on each device.

We also now always carry BOTH a mobile phone programmed to operate GPS offline AND a TomTom. When (never if) things go wrong, one may work when the other's got itself hopelessly confused.

I don't think the OP is American, but flanneruk just can't resist....

Oh, Flanner, it's all right.

Breathe deeply.

As is often, even usually, the case, Flanner is correct about the particulars and miles off the big picture.

The mindless following of GPS/Satnav is not limited to Americans not deficiencies to American products. I've collected stories like these for years, beginning with the German couple who drove their Mercedes into a river because the GPS said to, never mind that there were barriers announcing that the bridge had washed away.

I was showing a visitor around the island where we live. She noted that while we were clearly on a road, my GPS screen showed us in the middle of a field. No problem, Google Maps showed my house four blocks from its actual location for years. In cities, construction and one way streets often make it impossible to get to a destination without local knowledge.

Finally, many truck and bus drivers use automobile GPS devices because they are cheaper than commercial units. Probably 35 times a year such drivers block Storrow Drive by getting stuck under low bridges. Commercial units show low bridges; automobile GPS don't.

Our Garmin sometimes shows our car in the middle of the Adriatic. That's another thing that used to amuse our grandson. But the thing he enjoyed most was to have me enter a destination in a different direction from where we were going, so he could hear the Garmin say "RICALCOLO" at every intersection and roundabout.

We have done numerous road trips in europe - at least 20 - in many different countries. I would no more trust a GPS that I would a chimp for directions, routes or anything useful.

We use MAPs. Very detailed maps of each area we will visit as well as downloaded street maps of each town that shows one way streets, ZTLs, etc. And we review them before driving so we are prepared when we run into (as we always do) road works, a detour or a humungous hay truck doing 10 mph on a narrow country road.

This is part of the work of doing a road trip. And knowing how inaccurate the GPS are in New York there is no way I would trust them in countries with 2,000 year old road systems.

What nytraveler says.

You actually went through the same tollbooth five times? It never occurred to you to pull off and consult a paper map? I guess maybe you didn't have one, which was mistake # 1.

We live in Europe, in the middle of nowhere. We live on a street with no name in a house with no number. No One could possibly find us using some digital gadget...which is fine. But you just can't navigate around Europe, except on major roadways, without those old-fashioned things called paper maps. Our car is filled with them, and we never take off for anywhere without consulting them ahead of time and having them within an arm's reach when we're driving.

We just found in Italy GPS to work well on larger roads but to have anxiety attacks on small ones or in Countryside in Puglia. It simply could not find us. We had a huge scale map, which helped, but we still went round and round in some tiny towns.

Nobody's fault.

Map lovers: you do know Michelin is stopping making paper maps next year, right?

Yes, but IGN isn't.

Engage GPS - often useful but not always.

Engage brain - often useful but not always if limited.

St Cirq, but it does speak to the sales of maps. While I agree with you about their efficacy, they are on their way out.

Where i find a GPS of some description extremely useful is when i'm driving somewhere new by myself, or where i'm confronted by a diversion in a familiar area - it's difficult [though not impossible] to consult a map when you are driving.

But [and it's a big but] I would still stop and consult a map if things start to go pear-shaped. [I'm deliberately forgetting about the time that the GPS sent me onto the bank of an estuary - thank goodness the tide was out!]

There are two places locally where they have erected signs to say "Do not follow your GPS" - and these are on major roads, not tiny lanes.

When in Mexico 2 years ago, I downloaded the map on MY GPS 2 days before - so quite up to date I'd say.
We discovered one highway (a highway isn't built in one day, fgs !) that GPS didn't know about but maps did.
Having maps and GPS and a brain is indeed useful.
Just give the map to someone else than me, I get lost in the Streets of the Monopoly...
Did anyone ever uses his/her own GPS close to home ? Can be hilarious sometimes...