Welcome to Europe - where customers are always wrong.
We rented a car with Avis in France, and read all the problems at FT. We decided to pay 13 Euros extra per day to get the Super CDW to bring down the excess to 100 Euros instead of 1000 euros. Didn't get a flat tire but we got a wrong bill for billing us for gas that we have already paid for.
Will probably buy excess insurance somewhere else than Avis - it was a ripped off.