Car Hire Preauthorisation

When you book a car you are likely to hear the words preauthorisation, but we get many that question what this means, therefore we would like to clear this topic up a bit and make it crystal clear for our customers. When we navigate our way through the booking process explaining everything to you, that’s well you will hear us say that your card will have a preauthorisation of around £250-1250 depending on what company that we have chosen for you to hire with, don’t worry if we can we will always aim for the lowest!

A pre-auth is somewhat of an “insurance policy” for the car hire companies, they don’t take any of your money off of your account they are basically just given permission too. For an example say you are hiring a car off of a company that have a preauthorisation of £500, which is pretty standard in the rental industry, that £500 will not be taken off your card when you pick the car up but if you return the car damaged then then up to £500 will be taken depending on the cost of the repairs, however this is just an example! The issue with this is that you need to have the funds available including the cost of the car hire which in all can be quite the amount.

We can actually do car hire with no preauthorisation at all, which is much more convenient however this is only available in certain locations across the world.

Want more information on preauthorisation? Then our experienced reservation agents will be happy to help you with this, call us on +44 (0)113 880 0748 or email us at sales@thealternativeagency.co.uk and we will answer any questions that you have about the car hire process.