Dating back to the 60s, in fact. When I came back from Vietnam, Hertz wouldn’t rent me a car so I could go see my girlfriend, because I didn’t have a card. I truthfully didn’t even know what a credit card was at that time. This despite me standing there in uniform with $1,000 in cash in my hand. I was finally able to rent a car from a small start-up rental place called Dollar, who gladly took my cash.
With your assets, lending history and plenty of money in your banks you should be getting unsolicited cc offers in the mail?
Your banks have probably messaged you with all kinds of offers already, personal loans, cc, auto loans, second home loans. Log in and check, you don’t even have to go in person, you can apply online.
I’d look for an introductory 0% rate on purchases with at least a 10k credit limit. Credit cards often include insurance coverages when you rent a car. Don’t pick one with an annual fee, and who knows they might even. offer you a platinum card! Lol.
That’s interesting. Obviously I’m in the U.S. and we don’t care about the rest of the world. /s
The extra protection given by signature debit does add some value, though.
We have that same protection for Interac (except for the charge back protection I suppose):
Learn about our Zero Liability Policy - Interac
I’ve never understood why the US resisted the switch to Chip and PIN for so long (yes, I know it’s always about the money) while the rest of the world embraced it. I still cringe when I need to hand over my credit card to a waiter in the US who whisks it away from my sight. That’s unheard of in the rest of the credit card accepting world.
For the purpose of renting cars and RVs, what say the Dopers – is $10k a good choice?
I currently have several credit cards, and all of them get paid off in full every month. I don’t have automatic payment on any of them, or any of my other regular bills, because I have a (probably paranoid) fear of allowing them direct access to my bank account. All of my cards have some sort of cashback program, so I get something for using them. For example, the card I used the most lets my use the cashback to buy gift cards, so I regularly get Amazon gift cards, and my Amazon gift card balance is used to pay for my Kindle purchases Free Books!!
The claimed reasons were:
- Consumers would be confused (BS)
- It would cost a lot (as you noted)
The problem with #1 is clear; the problem with #2 is that if they’d been sane about it, they would have just started sending EMV cards as they expired, and then started the rollout. Instead they got to do it in a hurry after the Target breach (IIRC).
Somebody got a big bonus for “saving” money; 100% guaranteed that person did NOT get fired when it backfired. Corporate BS for the win!
I’m sure. As said upthread, the card is really so they can put a “hold” while the car is in your possession, and that should only be for a few hundred dollars.
More importantly, since you are getting the card for these purposes, is to make sure the card gives you insurance coverage for the car, and perhaps some perks related to travel.
Here is a random place to peruse.
You only really need a high limit if you want one of those metal cards, instead of just a plain ole plastic one.
I don’t think it’s simply a matter of issuing chip-enabled cards since it also requires new payment terminals. So any changes are complicated.
$10k is way more than you need to rent a car, but it’s fine for a CC limit. Assuming you’re the kind of person who isn’t going to max out your card, having a high limit gives you flexibility if sudden and unexpected expenses were to happen. For instance, say you’re on a road trip and get stranded in the middle of nowhere. Having a card with a high limit means you can stay in temporary lodging while your car gets fixed, eat out, rent a new car, etc. While it’s true you can typically do all that stuff with a debit card, a debit card is limited by how much you have in the bank. If you only have a debit card and run out of money in your bank account, you’re out of money. That could mean you’d be in a financial situation where you can’t pay your normal bills like rent, utilities, etc.
I charge virtually everything on my CC every month, but I also pay it off every month. Financially it’s the same to me as if I were using my debit card, but I get an extra 30 days to pay, my bank balance is protected against debit fraud, invalid charges don’t affect my bank balance, I get reward/airline points, my credit score is improved, etc. If I have big expenses in a month, I have more time to move money around to get it into my bank to pay off the CC. Provided someone can manage their CC balance properly, using a CC over a debit card has a lot of advantages.
Banks typically maintain at least two metrics for each credit card account. One is a measure of profitability, the other – sometimes called a B-score (behaviour score) – is a measure of risk based on the cardholder’s history. A high profitability score can sometimes offset a poor B-score, because banks are greedy.
At one time it was actually illegal in some places for grocery stores to accept credit cards. The reasoning was that grocery businesses would take credit cards as a convenience to customers, and then happily jack up grocery prices to compensate. Governments and consumer advocates were also concerned that low-income shoppers were likely to run unpaid balances on food purchases, increasing their food costs even more through interest charges.
The reasoning still seems sound, but I guess credit cards have become so ubiquitous that keeping them out of grocery stores was a losing battle. The Los Angeles Times reported in 1992 that over the previous year there had been a six-fold increase in the number of grocery stores taking credit cards, so that was about the time of the big change.
I used to use my debit card for purchases routinely and scoffed at this advice, but it does make sense and now I agree with it. Fraud on debit cards does happen. I’ve never experienced debit fraud but on at least one and I think two occasions, my bank proactively replaced the card because apparently a fraud investigation had flagged it as vulnerable.
Sure, but terminals also age out, especially as PCI DSS evolves. So, again, they COULD have done a gradual rollout and saved themselves a ton of $. The rushed rollout was VERY expensive.
It doesn’t explain why US banks lagged the rest of the world by more than a decade in chip and RFID technology, and the US still lags behind in mobile terminals where restaurant payments are processed right at the table. According to one of our most-traveled posters, these are now becoming quite common, but elsewhere they’ve been pretty much universal for many years.
$10K is actually the minimum credit limit for Visa Infinite, and some more exclusive variants have a $20K minimum.
I actually have, and it’s one of the things that made me switch from using a debit card for most of my purchases to using a credit card. I was fortunate in that I tend to check my bank account every couple of days, so I spotted the bogus charge quickly and was able to report it. Eventually the money was refunded to me, but it took time for the bank to investigate. I think if that had happened to a credit card, I would have had greater protection.
A lot of people (Dave Ramsey most notably) tell you to swear off credit cards completely, but if you use them wisely, as others have said, they are an important tool, give you more protection, can earn you either cash back or hotel stays or airline miles (or all of the above), and can help boost your credit rating.
It’s understandable why someone like Ramsey hates on credit cards. The people he’s dealing with are, for the most part, those who have absolutely no discipline in their spending. People who will max out their card every month and never pay more than the minimum payment. But if you’re capable of paying all of your monthly expenses with a debit card without getting into trouble (and it seems like you’ve proven that you are), then you should be able to do the same thing with a credit card.
One exception. When I started at Bell Labs in 1980, we didn’t get a corporate card, were not supposed to use personal cards, and so got a cash advance. Airfare was direct billed through the travel agency, and car rentals were also through Avis. Avis had a separate booth in Newark Airport just for AT&T employees, but I never saw it living in NJ and thus not needing it.
Direct billing rental cars continued long after we finally got credit cards.
I’m curious if US-based credit cards still have the card number embossed on the front. My last-issued Visa cards are notable for no longer having it, as this is considered unnecessary these days. In fact, they have no numbers at all, just my name (printed, not embossed), the name of the bank, the card type, and the Visa logo. The card number is printed on the back in case I have to call customer support, but no merchant ever needs it because all transactions are chip-based. It’s a welcome change as it makes each card a bit slimmer, and also allows cleaner, more attractive designs.
I worked retail when I was in high school and university (c. 1986-1993) and I ran enough cards through the manual imprinter to build up muscles in my forearms. Trying to read the carbon copy amounts for reconciliation and bank deposits was a pain in the butt.
None of mine are embossed anymore - they have the account number and expiration printed on them. Sometimes in the back and sometimes on the front. I don’t see how they could ever eliminate numbers altogether- although it’s been years since those embossers were used and swiping/tapping/inserting doesn’t need numbers, I’ll still need an account number to order online or pay over the phone.
My debit and HSA debit cards are embossed. As is my Merrick bank card. All others are smooth.
Don’t you need the account number for online purchases?