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Comment by derda | Hacker News Reader

Why didn't you rent from a conventional rental company that month?

Two reasons: I didn't know I was going to need it that much and I pay cash for everything and thus do not have a credit card. You cannot rent a car without a credit card. Period. They do not accept a visa debit card at all.

A few places will accept debit (Enterprise comes to mind) but they require an additional deposit (150 - $200 or more) in order to process the rental. It can be a bit of a pain.

In that case you've voluntarily constrained yourself from using the full range of options available. I don't know what your rationale for not having a credit card is, but if it's control, you should know that ZipCar still holds you liable in much the same way a regular rental do, they just trust you enough to not require "collateral" in form of a credit card.

Don't know if the US is the same but with UK Zipcar over 21's can pay a small amount (£15/month or £99/year) to reduce the damage fee waiver to £0. That way there's no liability except if you use the car for things that Zipcar prohibit.

We do this for each rental after being stung for damage done to the vehicle after we'd returned it[1]. It's an annoying flaw in their rental model; I now take photos/video of the car after I've returned it to hopefully prevent getting the blame in a future similar scenario.

1. You're essentially liable for any damage up until the time that it is next booked out. We had to pay as there was nothing we could do to prove it wasn't us. That damage even includes things like "damage caused by unavoidable events such as floods, hail, wind, trees falling, etc."

I have impulse control issues coupled with procrastination :) This makes credit cards a bad thing for me personally. So, several years ago - I decided I would live completely within my means and not do anything on credit. If I cant pay cash for it, I dont need it.

This personal choice has its issues, sure, but I have been happy for 7+ years this way, and aside from the one time I tried to rent a car at SFO to take for a weekend getaway, it has never been a detriment to my lifestyle.

Hmm, so what you need is a credit card with an extremely short billing cycle (i.e. settled daily using your debit card) and limited to a single "class" of expenses (car rental). I've spend some time thinking how a kind of Twilio for credit cards would work - an API to generate an instant card number with the exact terms you need. The main use case I considered was a card for online shopping that would only be good for use with one single merchant - then I can shop without worrying what will happen if they haven't secured their database correctly.

> The main use case I considered was a card for online shopping that would only be good for use with one single merchant - then I can shop without worrying what will happen if they haven't secured their database correctly.

BofA at least already does this - https://www.bankofamerica.com/privacy/accounts-cards/shopsaf... ..and a better frontend to it would be great!

I've seen this in a few places, but it seems to only be limited by expiry. Yes, it's a little easier to deal with if the number is compromised and you have to cancel it, but it doesn't actually offer any added protection - I think?

So does Citi, for the record:

https://www.citibank.com/us/cards/gen-content/messages/van/i...

Actually, some companies (Thrifty for example) will accept a debit card, but they will/may do a credit check first, and they will lock-up a few hundred dollars of your funds.

You are only doing yourself a disservice by not getting a credit card. I get purchase protection, price matching, fraud protection, free extended warranties, etc, for free, from my credit card provider. That's a pretty good deal.

Sure you can. I have rented cars a bunch of times without a credit card. Enterprise makes it pretty friendly, but most companies will rent you the car. Lost sales are lost sales, if you show up with money in hand they will try and get you into the car. Enterprise takes a deposit of some sort which is reasonable and the same thing that most hotel chains do.

A credit card isn't a ton of protection for the rental car company anyways, regardless of authorization it's not likely you have a credit line to cover the entire car.

Just showing up with money and hoping to get a car isn't a very good solution, when you're arriving in an airport where you don't know anyone and you truly need a car. I tried calling ahead and reserving a rental car without a credit card (my CC had just been approved, but not mailed yet) in this situation, and the answer from every rental place in the airport was a firm "No." I tried offering to give a huge deposit (after all, my checking account had $10k in it, and my new credit card would only have a $1k limit), but that didn't matter. It was clear that this was their policy, period. My friend who worked at another Enterprise confirmed this. Perhaps I could have ignored them and "just shown up with cash," but there is no way I was going to risk that.

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