The uncanny valley of car rental

I've got a history of problems with car rental in Europe.  It began in December, when I had a rental reserved in Athens, Greece, a rental around which our entire three week vacation had been planned.

I have rented before - in Lithuania and Germany. No problems.  It's not until you get into second tier countries that it becomes a problem, then becomes less of a problem as one progresses into third tier countries.  There seems to be an uncanny valley of car rental.

For those of you out there who aren't unapologetic sci-fi nerds, the uncanny valley refers to the depiction of robots in films.  If a robot looks like a robot (Wall-E), then we can fall in love with it.  If it looks totally human (AI) we can also fall in love with it.  But if it tries to look human and fails, it falls into the "uncanny valley", where it spooks us out too much for us to like it.  Thus, the uncanny valley is when you have some, but not quite enough of some characteristic to be useful, and having nothing is better than having just a little.

Thus it is with car rental.  In Germany the government and regulations are strong, international relations are top-notch, and US driver's license is accepted without reservation (but having a reservation is still a good idea).  In Bulgaria laws are more like suggestions, and the mentality of wild-west capitalism still thrives, as it did in Russia in the 1990's, where we all try to do what is right and good but if the law gets in the way of commons sense, we tend to ignore it.  Thus, the law in Bulgaria says you have to have an "International Drivers' License".  I did not.  But when I went past the Enterprise and the Hertz, I was able to find a local company that was more than happy to rent me a car at a reasonable rate, given the reasonable assumption that a 41 year old man who has been driving daily for almost three decades might also be able to drive in Bulgaria.  

Greece, however, falls into the uncanny valley.  Their government is not quite savvy enough to recognize drivers' licenses from foreign countries outside the EU, but their entrepreneurs are not quite emboldened enough, and oversight not quite lax enough, to ignore the requirement.  Thus, they fall into the annoying situation of requiring the IDL.

A few notes on the International Drivers' License.  

This is the biggest scam I have ever seen.  It seems to be perpetrated by AAA themselves, and perhaps even lobbied for in foreign countries by AAA. For a fee of $20 and a passport photo, they print out a document that repeats the text on the back of my valid US drivers' license verbatim in like ten different languages.  And this is accepted in Greece as a legitimate DL, while my actually legitimate DL is not accepted. 

They accept a document from a company that has not verified my driver's record, has not administered any sort of test to see if I can drive, and has to authority on the international level to verify my identity, but they won't accept my Maryland DL.  

Travel Tip:  Pay the $20 to get the fake drivers' license.  It's worth the hassle.  Sometimes doing the moral thing is just too much work.

Travel Tip: Take plentiful pictures and/or video of the car, especially the exterior, before you drive it.  Overseas agencies love to charge for damage that occurred prior to or after you had possession of the car.