Different car rental companies have different policies. We suggest you assume, for budgeting purposes, that your car hire company will block a sum equal to the excess payable for the theft or damage to your car hire on your credit card.
If you cannot afford this, or do not have a credit card, it's a case of contacting the local offices of your car rental firm to see if they are prepared to be more flexible. Our sister company Clarify Car Hire also offer specific debit card car hire packages which we can guarantee are perfect for those who have no credit card.
Our recommendation is, if at all possible, to take a spare credit card, that you don't normally use, to use for pre-authorisations - and that's for hotel bills as well as for renting a hire car - this will mean your normal holiday spending money is unaffected by anyone either pre-authorising or blocking your credit card.
Please feel free to feed back your personal experiences to us at MoneyMaxim so we can add your experience to our notes.
Compare the costs of car hire insurance using the MoneyMaxim car hire insurance comparison service.