Islay Car Hire (Permanently Closed)

The owner was the only rude person we met on the entire island. We needed car so we called Islay Car Hire first. He quoted me £50 on the phone, but his website only said £45...so we booked on the website. That evening he cancelled our reservation saying he *suddenly* did't have any more cars. This put us in a bind because it was too late to call anyone else. Fortunately D&N MacKenzie (the other car rental on Islay) saved us the next day with a same-day rental that she delivered FOR FREE for a cheaper base rate of £41. Avoid Islay Car Hire at all costs.

We booked a car on this service, a credit card payment was placed through the website and accepted, and we received a confirmation email. However, when we showed up to the place designated for pick up there was no one there. No one was in the office to answer our calls and when we finally did get a hold of the owner he said he didn't provide car services for only one day. We read the confirmation email to him for our reservation and he still wouldn't provide any assistance at all. He had a completely nonchalant attitude toward this major inconvenience. Because of this inadequate booking service we missed our meeting on the island.

Recommended by AirBnB host. Superb friendly and professional service. No big deal to drop car at a different venue to that of collection. Clean and tidy car. It was a pleasure to do business with Islay Car Hire.Would recommend and would use them again.

Scott was really easy to communicate with, typically answering emails within an hour. We were greeted at the ferry by his friendly wife who gave us a great welcome to the island and quick clear instructions about the car. The car was immaculate and good value for money. Thanks for the lovely welcome to the island and fab service Scott and team!

We rented a car on Islay for 3 weeks with Scott. His service was great. He replied to our emails often within minutes, waited at the airport for my friend and came to the airport another day for the 2nd driver's signature even though it was a bank holiday. This extra service did not seem possible with another car rental. We got a much bigger car than we actually booked, which we liked. The car was clean and everything functioned well. To extend the car that wasn't a problem at all and seemed to be very uncomplicated. We would have expected though a slight price reduction for our long-term rental of 3 full weeks. Nevertheless we could highly recommend Scott's service and reliability.

The owner was the only rude, unfriendly person we encountered on the whole island. Car was functional but dirty (several pieces of chewing gum needed to be cleaned out when we picked it up). Owner stalked us at our rental house to tell us that we couldn't use a temporary bike rack on the car (nothing about that on his website, btw, only rules saying no bikes "in" the car). We were creeped out that he came uninvited to our rental house, and surprised that he was so abusive and angry when telling us about the new, surprise rule against bike racks (we were happy to remove the rack once we knew it wasn't allowed). There's another rental on the island - D&N Mackenzie. I'd suggest trying them instead, even though their web presence isn't as professional looking as this company. Be prepared for owner surveillance if you do rent from this company.