Back to Car Hire 2006

The favourite saying of many a trader "Cash is King" does not apply to car rental companies. Plastic is the only currency they accept. And if you do not have a credit card, then you're lost, because in most cases it is impossible to get a car without one of these little plastic cards.

One of the main reasons why car rental companies are so attracted to the credit card is that it enables them to take a deposit from customers without the customer actually noticing this. Experience shows that in many cases the signature on the rental agreement also includes authorisation to charge the credit card. This saves a lot of discussion and means low expenditure for handling. Hence, car rental companies very rarely accept cash deposits. And if they do, then these sums are often astronomical. However, this type of deposit payment is the safest because each party is clearly aware of how much money was deposited.
Our test also brought other variants to light: Avsar, placed last in the test, and Star in Alanya, for instance, kept the passport as a deposit. Other car rental companies in Turkey, on the other hand, did not demand any deposit or only very small sums.

Most companies however, still insisted on a blank credit-card slip. And this had severe consequences for the tester at the Deep car rental company in Bodrum, Turkey. When he came to return his rented car, he was told by a visibly over-tired employee to simply park the vehicle. A check would be later carried out "at leisure“. This was a fatal error, because the car had also not been checked for damage the previous day upon collection. The bitter consequence showed up at home when the credit-card bill arrived: Deep charged the tester 300 euro without stating any reasons for this. After enquiring, it turned out that the money was demanded for damage that had already happened before the car was rented.  All the car rental company did was send by post a copy of the bill without any comment and a business card. By the way, the 300 euro was the deductible. This was neither mentioned at the time of renting nor documented in the rental agreement.

In cases like this, victims can only recover their money if they can prove than an injustice has occurred. "This is, of course, difficult with a signature that was made on a blank slip", says ADAC lawyer Katrin Stroech. The only way to prevent this from happening is insistent questioning before renting and completion a damage report on acceptance and upon return of the rented vehicle.

Usually all cards from major credit-card companies are accepted, i.e. Eurocard/Mastercard, Visa, Diners Club and American Express. Bank cards or EC cards are very rarely accepted. However, it is still advisable to find out in advance whether your credit card will be accepted because in some cases only certain cards are accepted.

It is also important who the holder of the card is because many car rental companies insist that the credit-card holder is the person renting and collecting the car.

Despite all the necessary precaution, plastic money does have its advantages. For instance, liability in the event of loss or misuse is relatively limited (between 25 and 73 euro). This, however, only applies if the card holder has observed his diligence obligation, for instance, by storing the card safely and reporting the loss immediately. Another advantage of the plastic card is that many credit-card companies offer special insurance cover which often already includes the “Majorca” or Traveller Policy and also traveller's legal costs insurance. The credit advantage of the card should also be remembered. The card holder is granted interest-free credit from the time of payment to the time the sum is charged to the holder's bank account.