Car Hire

dane-katie

Hiya, i am off to Australia on the 3rd June 2009 all flights booked etc and i am now looking for car hire and im struggling.

Thing is i dont have a credit card and am unable to get one (long story) but im wanting to hire a car from 8th june 09 to 6th july 09 and everywhere i look you need a credit card to leave a deposit when you get there?

Can anyone help me to find a company that dont need this? i will be able to pay it in cash AUD but no other way?

I will be hiring hopefully the car from Melbourne.

thanks

nico26

Do you not have a family member who can pay the deposit and you give them the money?

dane-katie

They wont be coming to Australia with us though. They want the card in either mine or my fellas name to take the deposit once we are there and collecting the car.

Scubabe

I don't know if you can still do this or not, but when I lived in Oz, I once hired a car without a credit card. This was about 7 years ago.

We had to leave a very hefty cash deposit at the hire car desk when we collected the car. This cash deposit was refunded when we returned the car, after they checked that we had not damaged it.

You may need to phone the car hire companies to explain this over the phone, you probably can't organise this over the internet.

The other idea I have, is do you have a Visa Debit card?
Because in Oz, anything with the Visa symbol is classified as a credit card, so you could probably blag the Visa Debit card off as a Visa Card, since it will just be swiped and a "hold" put on funds on the card to the same value as the insurance excess. If you pay extra to reduce the excess, then the funds hold could be as low as $500 (£250).

Cheers

Ness

dacouch

You could get a pay as you go credit card, you basically spend what cash you put on there. I have mine with mycashplus which I like

wolfytom2009

dacouch wrote: »

You could get a pay as you go credit card, you basically spend what cash you put on there. I have mine with mycashplus which I like

I'm in the same position and I know they won't accept pre-paid cards. Heaven knows why.

dane-katie

Yeah i will prob have to ring them and arrange it, the only card i have is a visa electron card so i dont think that is good enough.

i will ring in advance or wait till we get there to see what we can do.

I have not found a pre-paid credit card that will go into australian dollars unless im looking in the wrong place?

dacouch

wolfytom2009 wrote: »

I'm in the same position and I know they won't accept pre-paid cards. Heaven knows why.

It says the in the FAQs it has a bar on it for hire cars but they can lift this in certain circumstances if you contact them.

I think they don't like them as the car hire company want to debit damages etc to the card. I think they "reserve" a certain amount of money on your card until you return the car back and they are happy (I not certain on that)