Car Rental (budget Chiang Rai)

[bifftastic]

I booked two days car rental through Thai Visa and Budget at Chiang Rai airport. Everything went smoothly, one of their reps met us off the plane from Bangkok at 21:30, we checked the car together, she took a tracing of my bank card for the payment and the deposit, good car, good sat nav, no accidents, collected from my hotel free of charge. So far so good.

Then, I checked my bank account online and there was 20,000 baht kind of floating in limbo. 'Ok, that's the pre-authorised deposit, couple of days max, it will be cancelled and i can withdraw it.

That was 6 days ago! They say they cancelled it, UK bank say they haven't. Every day I check the ATM, no money available!

So, if you plan on hiring a car, please be aware that this 20,000 baht may well not be accessible for anything up to a week after you give the car back.

It may be that due to the bank closures things have backed up a bit but all my other transactions in Thailand up to and including 2 days ago are all showing up fine.

Next time I'll try and use a different card for the deposit, was down to my last 100 baht till a friend stepped in to help me today!

[ukrules]

As far as I was aware there is no way to cancel a 'pre auth' you just have to let it expire or make a charge against it.

Maybe they meant they have cancelled the transaction and the pre auth will expire on it's own, I can't rmember how long pre auths last for, it's either 7, 10 or 14 days and maybe it varies from bank to bank.

[laosuwan]

i have rented from them four times in the past two years. very good service, never any problem. to my knowledge they never ran my card through until I returned the car but 20000 baht is not very much money. if that puts you in the poorhouse maybe you should not be renting a car. just saying.

[proximity]

This is one of the reasons you should use a proper credit card to rent a car. Never use a debt card!

[Traxster]

I always use cash.......no worries.

[bifftastic]

i have rented from them four times in the past two years. very good service, never any problem. to my knowledge they never ran my card through until I returned the car but 20000 baht is not very much money. if that puts you in the poorhouse maybe you should not be renting a car. just saying.

yeah cheers, life advice, i was posting to let people know about a problem i had so that they could maybe avoid it in the future.

As I said, the service was very good, the car was fine, it was the banks that caused the hold up.

20000 baht may not be a lot of money to you but if I'm on a budget then holding it up for a week has an impact.

The actual trabnsaction and the pre-auth cancellation (or whatever they do or don't do with it) both went through on the same day.

And they wouldn't take cash and yes, next time I will use a different card.

I will repeat, this post is for information, I do not require any advice on this subject, thank you.