[Travel] Travel rip-offs

Recently traveled to Amsterdam and had a pre-booked a hire car to be told we couldn’t use a debit card and as I didn’t have a credit card I couldn’t take the car I’d booked and paid for.

Went to hertz next door who said debit card is fine but 750 euros for 3 days! Obviously said no thanks. Had a look hertz website same car 110 euros. Served in under 5 mins by the same man who gave me the same car for 640 euros less.

Anyone else had anything similar? Never had a problem using debit cards before, don’t have any credit cards and never really wanted one. How and why do company’s try and rip people off this way.

It’s not a ‘rip off’ - it’s about taking the holding charge deposit for any damage , claims etc.

Presumably this was in the T&Cs when you booked

Not the same scenario but I got caught in Austria where, on collecting the pre-booked hire car, the company took a holding deposit on my credit card of a few thousand pounds. The car was only a Passat or similar.

That stuffed us from paying our hotel bill a week later, as now there were no available funds on that card to pay the hotel!

I stand to be corrected, but I’m pretty sure that holding deposits held against a credit card used to be negligible.