Hire a car in France with no credit card

Piggie7

Hi,

I am off to Paris next month with my family. However we do not own a credit card and we are finding that you need one in order to hire a car. Without a hire car there simply is no holiday as we are staying 3hrs away from the airport.

Any help on where I can obtain a hire car in France using a Visa Electron debit card please?

Black_Eyeliner

I have the same problem. Avis and https://www.valuecarrentals.com appear to accept Visa Debit cards (not Visa Electron), although I am awaiting email confirmation of this from both companies. I will post again when I get a reply from them.

spiro

europecar have no problem with my Barclays Visa Debit card.

Black_Eyeliner

Black_Eyeliner wrote: »

I have the same problem. Avis and www.valuecarrentals.com appear to accept Visa Debit cards (not Visa Electron), although I am awaiting email confirmation of this from both companies. I will post again when I get a reply from them.

This is the reply from value car rentals:

'Unfortunately they do not accept visa debit cards in France. Unless you have another named driver with you that has a credit card in their own name you will not be able to take out the car.'

Black_Eyeliner

Black_Eyeliner wrote: »

I have the same problem. Avis and www.valuecarrentals.com appear to accept Visa Debit cards (not Visa Electron), although I am awaiting email confirmation of this from both companies. I will post again when I get a reply from them.

This is the reply from Avis:

Debit cards are accepted in France, but only plain Visa debit cards, ie, not Maestro, Switch, Electron, etc. The Visa debit card is acceptable for the deposit as well. Please bear in mind, though, that the deposit in France is usually EUR800.

Looks like I'm going to be booking with Avis then!

Max_1066

Is there no way you could apply for a credit card beforehand ? It could always be cut up after the trip.

If you do use a debit card they will actually put the charge on the card so you'll need to have at least that amount in your bank account. Its not like charge cards where they just take a record of it.

Piggie7

Hi guys,

Just a little update on the car hire. I am now back from my hols and we had a great time with the use of a hire car!! We hired a car through Hertz using our visa debit card to hire the car and they froze 250 euros on our debit card for the excess which we got back. We managed to secure a hire car the day before we where due to fly out and at the other end we had no problems what so ever. Would highly recommend using Hertz to those who do not have a credit card.

StuieUK34

Cheers for the info.... Am in the same position for when i goto Florida next year (dont u just love comments like "get a credit card", as if we didnt know that already, doh!)...
I was gonna use ALAMO as i found they accept Visa Debit cards OK, but would prefer to go with Hertz, so if they take visa debit cards, happy days!!