Why? Even if you can pay cash up front do you need a credit card to rent a car?
Sex is like bridge: If you don’t have a good partner, you better have a good hand.
– Charles Pierce
The credit card ensures any number of things - it ensures you can’t stiff them for damage to the car, used but not-replaced gas, an extra day or two spent elsewhere, extra mileage on the odometer…just paying up front for the cost of the day’s (or whatever time-period) rental with cash doesn’t give the assurance they want.
Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@kozmo.com
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
There is a oft repeated scene in The Simpsons, where Snake drives off, with a hearty “So long, suckers!” That summarizes what the car rental companies are afraid of. Being able to pay for a car rental is one thing. But the rental companies also want as much assurance as possible that you are the kind of responsible person who will actually eventually return the car, instead of selling it on the black market.
Credit card companies do a fair amount of work to make sure they are only issuing their cards to reliable persons, so the rental companies use that as a rough yardstick of trustworthy persons. Some rental companies won’t accept secured credit cards either, since if anything they mean that you have a bad track record. And don’t expect them to be impressed by your “Visa Check card”–it’s no different than a regular checking account to most of them.
Smacks of discrimination to me. So what if I decide to live without credit cards. I can’t avail myself of their business? Is that any different than if I happened to be black? Or a woman? Or old? Who do I complain to?
Sex is like bridge: If you don’t have a good partner, you better have a good hand.
– Charles Pierce
Please, PLEASE tell me this is a joke…
That movie taught me some important lessons in life. 1. I can build a robot that loves me. 2. I can reanimate my dead girlfriend by jamming bits of metal and silicon into her skull. Both are lessons I use on a daily basis…
Well, if it’s insurance they want, what about those who have INSURANCE? Such as, a rental agreement and insurance which covers anything which might go wrong? Hell, I had to pay for extra insurance when renting a car once because I only had liability at the time on the car I owned…
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Yer pal,
Satan
*Voted “Too Well-Liked to be a Moderator” by SD Staff
It is not discrimination. It is the way of the world.Get with the program.
As a former travel agent who had to deal with the few weirdo’s of the world that don’t carry plastic, here’s what I remember.
Alamo car rental use to be the only car rental that did Cash Qualifying. The rules of it are hazy in my mind, but it went something like this:
You must have:
1.Valid driver’s liscense
2.A pay stub from the last 30 days.
3. A utility bill in your name
4. and a bunch of other things that escape my mind, like being over 25 and having a cash deposit of soemthing like $300 to get the car.
Any travel agent worth her salt will be able to tell you what the requirements are. They won’t have all the answers at their finger tips and will have to call you back.
People who do not have credit cards for the fear of god knows what(CIA is “watching them” crapola), are infantile and not living reality . People who do not have a credit card because of bad credit, well, would you want these people to drive your car?
What are you 12 years old? You have no one to complain to but yourself for not having a credit card. Would you loan your car to a complete stranger without some kind of financial recompense of theirs in your possession?
Christ on a Crutch, grow up and get with the program. No wait, don’t get a credit card. People with pea sized brains like yours should not be on the road. Take a fucking taxi and leave the driving to someone else.
PS: please never ever travel abroad. You’ll give Americans a bad name…I mean, a worse name.
WTF? Surely you jest (pun intended). I have bad credit. What’s that got to do with whether I am a good driver, or how trustworthy I am? Some people have bad credit because they have real life hardships like divorce, or layoffs. Not all people with bad credit are deadbeats.
The problem is people who make sweeping generalizations about people with a bad credit history.
Putz. (sorry, Wally, couldn’t resist)
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Delta-9 Home Page
delta,
I think you’re missing the point. Even the best drivers have accidents sometimes. And if I own a car rental joint, you’re darn tootin’ that I expect people to pay for their mistakes. If they can’t, I don’t really care if it’s because they blew $60,000 on sea monkeys or if they went through a rough divorce. Fact is, I’m out of money either way.
Reading Shirly’s post again, I fail to see at all where her “sweeping generalizations about people with a bad credit history” was. Care to expound a bit???
Yeah, you idiot…get on board with the rest of us smart people who are paying up to 18 percent in interest on our purchases.
What the hell makes you think that having a credit card makes you responsible? How many assholes out there are barely paying the minimum on thousands of dollars in debt?
The reason credit cards are required is so the company can have access to your capital in the event of a crash, abandonment etc.
When I wanted to rent a car a couple of weeks ago, I asked them how much they needed free on a credit card. They only needed the price of a day’s rental, since I wanted to rent for the day. So if I stole, smashed, or abandoned the car, they couldn’t have charged it to my card if I didn’t have that high of a line of credit! I thought they’d want $300 or something.
I actually don’t have a major credit card right now. I’m not a miscreant, I’m broke. I cut them up so I wouldn’t use them. It’s a pain in the ass, but it keeps me from doing something I’ll regret when the bill comes. I don’t think this makes me some kind of stupid person unable or unworthy of being responsible for a rent-a-car.
I’ll take my business to the cash place. Big deal.
A girl
No kidding, kent4mmy. As for giving Americans a bad name, financially speaking we already have one. Our annual rate of savings is -1%. Yeah, negative. How do Americans manage negative savings? Credit, of course.
Shirley’s post seemed to imply that people who don’t have a credit card, or are unable to get one, are losers.
I’m sorry, I have just a little problem with that.
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Delta-9 Home Page
After rereading the thread, I will retract my “sweeping generalization” statement. The rest of my posts still stand as written.
The SDMB Smokeout Continues:
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I find the post by Shirley Ujest to be offensive and erroneous on a couple of levels.
First of all, the ability to drive is not based upon ones credit rating. The ability to pay ones bills has little to do with their ability to not wreck a car, and until I see a study which tells me otherwise, I will assume you are just generalizing.
Second of all, a good many people do not use plastic. Some cannot get credit cards, because you need credit to get credit and that oxymoron leaves a lot of willing folks on the sidelines until they finance their first car or even house.
Also, a ton of people do not use credit cards because of the interest, as many people here already spoke up about.
I find these comments offensive because, while I do not have a bed credit rating, and I do use credit cards, up until a few years ago, I did neither and had a spotless driving record, and I also know many people who would resent being told they were the equivilant of a “12 year old” because some bankdidn’t find them worthy of a Visa or because they simply didn’t want one.
In a nutshell, Shirly, lick my bag.
Yer pal,
Satan
http://www.raleighmusic.com/board/Images/devil.gif
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Satan,
you say:
I agree. But, on the off chance that you have a wreck, and you are at fault, then what? If you can’t pay your current bills, how are you going to pay this one?
I can’t speak what Shirley means but I can take my interpretation of what she said and go with that. I think that his logic of “I don’t have a credit card, and that is the same as me being a black/female/elderly” crap was what earned him the 12 year old comment, not the fact that he didn’t have a credit card.
That movie taught me some important lessons in life. 1. I can build a robot that loves me. 2. I can reanimate my dead girlfriend by jamming bits of metal and silicon into her skull. Both are lessons I use on a daily basis…
Also, a bunch of profanity and general insults that I’m too busy to pull out and quote right now.
What the heck? This one is going to the Pit. Y’all can insult each other there.