Block on your credit card when renting a car (and possibly a bike) abroad

John Roberts

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This is a cut-and-paste of what I wrote in the B&B about the projected £99 block on cards when refuelling at serve-yourself fuel pumps in the UK, it did seem more appropriate in the Travel section ...

We were in Australia and New Zealand in February and I nearly shat myself when I found that the car rental people put a block of AUD4,000 (near enough £2000) on my card which was bad enough in itself, but after we dropped the car off we took an internal flight and picked up another car three days later and we had another AUD3,000 (£1,500) block on the card. When I expressed my worries that they would be slow to remove the initial £2,000 block I was breezily reassured that it would be lifted as soon as the returned car was thoroughly checked over.

I was very relieved that they found no reason (e.g. damage to the car) to actually hang on to my money as unexpectedly having a total of £4,500 blocked on the card in the middle of the holiday could have been a trifle awkward to say the least. By the way, I always have insurance excess cover from insurance4carhire.com but that made no difference, they would still have to put the block in place.

I'd never had my card blocked like this before despite renting cars mainly in Europe and the States several times a year for the last ten years - I can hardly believe I wouldn't have noticed. Another illustration of the importance of keeping up with the small print. :)
 
I think it’s been happening for years, Hotel’s do it as well, I found that my Revolut card suddenly got emptied when an American hotel suddenly decided it needed to block another $700, mid stay! I was somewhat Peed off


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Revolut cards don’t work on most pay at the pump petrol stations and when I questioned this I was told that the main reason is because the petrol station operators take the money and have a tendency to be slow at putting it back so unless you’ve loaded the card up big time it’d be rendered useless. Mine is set to auto top up as soon as it drops below £100 so in theory it should be ok but it still gets declined if I try to pay at the pump in Europe.
 
Each time we rented a car, four times on this holiday, the block was pointed out to us at the desk; I think (well, I hope) I'd remember it I had come across it before.
 
Be a reet bastard if you or somebody else damages the rental car..
And suddenly you're thousands of poonds down on yer card until its sorted..

:mad:
 
Be a reet bastard if you or somebody else damages the rental car..
And suddenly you're thousands of poonds on yer card until its sorted..

:mad:
Absolutely! And would they believe that it was somebody else's fault anyway? To be fair, I have had a bad scrape on a car recently, in the US, I think, and was quite worried about it, it was all the way across the rear bumper. It was great to be told when I returned the car at the end of the rental period that he could tell that I couldn't have done it myself as it was from side to side. Then in Oz I said I was surprised at how cursory a look they had at the condition of my returned car, and the guy just shrugged and said that they were only checking that I hadn't had an accident and that there weren't any serious dents in the bodywork.

All rather different to the inspection I got in Germany, would you believe ...!
 


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