Renting a car
Moms View Message Board: General Discussion: Archive May 2004:
Renting a car
We are going on vacation in a couple of weeks. We have almost decided to rent a minivan. (we currently drive a Taurus)
Just one problem.....you have to have a credit card to rent a vehicle. We paid all of ours off and cancelled them, except for one that we are still paying on, but we cancelled the account and are just paying off the balance. So, we don't have a credit card in our name.
We have a debit card and a savings account and a bunch of other accounts, but no dang credit card. We asked (at Avis) if we could use our debit card and they said no. And we asked if we could make a cash deposit that we could get back when we returned the van and they said no.
Has anyone ever ran into this problem before? If we book the car through a travel agent do we still have to have a credit card? Any ideas?
~I thought it was supposed to be a good thing to have no credit cards LOL~
This is just frustrating.
Yep. You do have to have a credit card to rent a car. I was at a conference in Maine when I was in college. I met this girl from Ohio there and we decided we would rent a car and drive to L.L. Bean which was an hour away and open 24 hrs. What an adventure! Driving to L.L. Bean in the wee hours of the morning with a person I barely knew. Problem was...to rent a car you had to be 21 AND have a credit card. I had the card, but was only 20. She was 21, but no card. Needless to say, I've never been to L.L. Bean 
You probably won't be able to rent a car from anyone without a credit card. I understand not having one and kudos to you for not being enslaved to a credit card! However, it is good to have one major credit card for emergencies or instances such as this. Visa, Mastercard, or AmEx would be a good option. With AmEx, you HAVE to pay the balance off each month. If it is too tempting to have a credit card in your possession, then you can literally freeze it in a block of ice, keep it in your freezer, and just take it out when you absolutely need to. Don't know a good way to get a rental car for now though. Sorry. 
P.S. For now you might be able to re-activate the account you are currently paying down. It's worth a try.
I have rented from local companies with a debit card. Like the local Ford dealership or GM dealership. I remember this because two times people have hit my vehicle and I don't have rental on my insurance. I had to use my bank debit card, we don't have credit cards either.
Call around to your local dealerships.
Ugghhh....what a bummer
Yes, I'm sure we could reactivate the card that we are still paying off. I didn't even think of trying that. Maybe I'll give that a try. Thanks!
Marg....we were posting at the same time LOl
We haven't tried our local dealers because of the mileage restrictions. You only get like 150 miles a day. That adds up to only being about 900 miles. It's 600 miles one way for us. Then we would be paying by the mile which would be a LOT!
If all else fails, I guess we'll just take our own car.
That's what we do Robin, there are no big rental places near us (25 minutes away and that's a pain in the butt). So we just rent local.
Budget rent-a-car will let you rent a car with a debit card.
I just checked with Budget, and they said no They said that specific locations will allow debit cards, but not the location we are looking at. Maybe I can find a different location close by.....I'll keep looking.
I FOUND ONE!!!!
Always rent from HERTZ They were VERY nice and glady accept debit/check cards at the time of rental rather than credit cards!!
I'm glad you found one Robin!
Thanks Marg
There is all the hype now-a-days about paying off debt and getting rid of the credit cards. But then, it bites you in the back side in the end LOL.
Glad we found someone that supports credit-cardless consumers!
We ran into this problem a few weeks ago when we rented a car while ours was in the shop. We weren't allowed to use a debit card but we had to put down a $500 deposit. Ouch! This was on top of the charge for the car rental. That was with Enterprise. I don't think I've ever used Hertz but I'll remember that since we are credit card free also.
|
Members
