www.iva.co.uk

Can anyone help me out with a question concerning the cash plus prepaid mastercard please.

I noticed that you can upgrade so that the card can be accepted for car hire.

How does this work as I thought that car hire firms will only accept 'full on' credit cards or sometimes a visa debit card with a large deposit?

Are there any extra fees etc. for having this car hire option?

I do hire a car out from time to time and if this card is widely accepted it could be very useful to me.

Hay endsmeet, I don't know but I'll bump you up for someone who does. X

Hello Endsmeet

I got caught out with this when I went to hire a car about a year ago. I didn't realise that there were restrictions on car hire, apparently it is because of the amount of fraud that goes on. My son-in-law dropped me off to pick up my new hire car and I was stranded when my card was unauthorised. A call to Cashplus customer services remedied the problem in about 20mins at no extra charge and now I am 'covered' for car hire which is authorised on my Cashplus account.

Debbie

Hi Soulgrowth,
That's interesting as I sometimes hire a car but find my self having problems because of my IVA.
Some companies will accept my Debit card and some don't, some cash and some not and that's also different branches within the car hire firm itself.

Hmmm, need to have a think about this now.

BTW, the web page that I found that explains car hire with a pre paid card is http://www.what-prepaid-card.co.uk/car- ... a-car.html

Cashplus is the only card that can 'turn on' the the car hire facility.Just make sure you have enough funds topped up and inform them prior to a hire

I rented a car for around eight months between my old leased car being sent back and my new lease car arriving. I was told by a couple of different rental companies that a credit check was not carried out for rental, so it's perhaps more to do with the card than the IVA Endsmeet.

I found Thrifty to be most reliable and the most competitively priced and they simply 'debited' my Cashplus card each month for ongoing payments http://www.thrifty.co.uk/cgi-bin/gen5?r ... =&locname=

Depending on how long and what you need the car hire for it might be useful to look at a short lease deal from Secretariat who I have now changed over to. They have been just as brilliant as thrifty [:)]
http://www.secretariatservices.net/Cont ... /index.asp

Debbie

Hi Soulgrowth,
Thanks for the info, I checked the Thrifty site and noticed that is says that prepaid cards are not accepted but you can use a debit card.
I take it that they do accept the cash plus card as this has the car hire option.

What I found with using my debit card is that some places will accept it but they 'pre charge' you with the full car excess.
One place I phoned said that they would get pre authorisation for the cars full excess which would be 700+euros[:0]
And another place that I contacted (within the same company)said that they only pre charge a full tank of petrol if you don't take the option of prepaying it.
As you say, its certainly the card that defines the charges or acceptance.

700+euros is well over the top, car hire 3000 for instance only charge 400+ in advance for a mid sized car (1 week).

As it happens I'm now hiring a car through Hertz using my Cash Plus Master card. I believe Avis will accept it also.

This card is brill, I've had it three months, just made sure there was enough to cover a weeks hire, and phoned their customer services to upgrade the card before hiring.

Hope this info helps?

I think it's definately more to do with whether the card itself has been authorised for car hire or not ... the prepaid cards are essentially either Visa or Mastercard so I can't see how they could tell that it is a prepaid card anyway. But it is true that the full funds need to be available upfront.

Debbie

Hi Johnt,
That is great news, the company I usually use is Hertz so I will be certainly looking at the Cashplus card.

Do you know if the car hire option is ok with all cashplus's payment choices ,

I don't really use it all that often and would prefer to use the flexiplus option rather than paying monthly.

Hi Soulgrowth,
I believe that they can tell by a couple of things, firstly the card number is unique to prepaid cards and the other is that the numbers on a 'real' credit or debit card have raised numbers on them, the Hertz people told me this when I phoned them a few months back.

Interesting ... I'm off to have a look at my card [:)]

I have said for a long time now that if I knew how to buy shares I would buy them in the prepaid credit card industry ... this will be a booming industry

Debbie

Yeh, my Virgin prepaid is totally flat, no raised numbers

I've never managed to get a Cashplus card - I applied last year and was asked for proof of ID, which I didn't have (I have no utility bills and there was no-one to certify other documents) so I gave up. I tried again a little while ago and couldn't apply as there was already an outstanding application! I refuse to ring their overpriced call centre, so it looks as though I'll have to go without!

BTW, the Sterling card also allow car hire.

This is why this site is invaluable. Husband has family in France and offered us a free holiday (apart from flights and car) next year. Thought if we started saving now, should be able to scrape enough together. But I was unsure how to get a hire car as I remember last time they wanted a CC as a deposit (at 1500 euros!!).

Have applied for the card and will put at least £10 a month on, so that when we come to get car hire, I'll phone the customer services and have the car hire block removed and we should be okay. I've read in several places that you need to have a good account history in order for this to be reviewed favourably, so if we start now by next Aug it should be no problem.