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.
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.