Is a £2000 credit card hold normal for car hire?

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I'm looking into car hire from Kerry Airport in October. Everything i can find requires upwards of a £2000 hold on a credit card for a family size car. Is this normal or am I missing something? It seems a lot of money to put down for a week, it would max out our credit card!

Yes it is in my experience. However if you take out the car hire company's own insurance (which is usually expensive) you may not have to

Is this an Ireland thing then? We've hired cars in various places including recently in Jersey and there was no credit card hold at all.

Nope had to pay €1000 hold in mainland Europe, they pushed for €2000 to limit excess but we took out worldwide car hire cover earlier this year so said we’d risk it

We hired a car in Croatia last April and they put €2000 on the credit card.

Enterprise recently took £1 deposit but that was England, hired a car last month in Cyprus €600 deposit but different company.

Martin Lewis discussed this on 5Live the other week, it is to cover minor damage, then at the desk they try and flog you an extra, expensive insurance to repay you if you lose this excess. There is a cheap standalone cover you can buy beforehand to do exactly the same thing. You still need the credit card on hold but it will repay you if they take money off it. Scroll down this link.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-car-hire/#excess

We’ve rented cars mostly in the US, have done some European countries like Italy and Greece, we’ve never had a hold anywhere near as high as that. The hold is only usually in the hundreds.

We hired a car at Cork Airport and had a £2000 fee held on our credit card.

Normal. Make sure you have your own insurance beforehand and bring proof to avoid any further last-minute upselling, though.

Yes, we had €1,500 hold last week in maonland Europe. We'd taken out standalone excess insurance (for about £60) to avoid the excess and their upselling (which was over £300) but the guys before us at the counter were talked into the £300 - it did mean no €2,000 hold for them though.

Can you get another credit card specifically for the hold? Or pay for the holiday spends not on credit card? Otherwise you may be faced with a decision of known c€300 actually gone to free up the rest of your card limit for the holiday.

A £2000 limit is pretty low for a credit card, the lowest I had was £3000, but my current one is £11,000 (not that it would get to that level).

It's at the upper end but not unusual and a good reason to have a credit card available for this sort of thing. If your current limit is inadequate, you could always ask for it to be raised, you might even be able to do it yourself in the app.

£2000 is a tiny limit these days, it wouldn't even cover normal spending (groceries, fuel, travel, meals out etc) for a lot of families given you need to have at least two month's worth available to cover repayment cycles.

Thanks, yea i spotted this after a look on money saving expert, I'm planning on taking out the standalone cover, just wasn't expecting the hold 😬

We recently took out a credit card specifically for the holiday, but set the limit at £2500 as we didn't think we would need more... may have to see if we can increase it. We could put it on another credit card we have, i just worry as you see so many bad reviews about car rental companies!

Well for the big name car hire starting with H, depending on the car size the minimum “hold” on your card if you do not take their insurance is €2k (in Ireland). For bigger cars eg XC90, Range Rover, Mercedes, BMW you could be looking at up to 4K or over.
If you can afford it especially if it for a week or less, take their insurance if you don’t want to do that then get your own insurance and the excess will be held against your card. If there’s any damage to the car your excess is taken and you make your claim from your insurance to recoup your money.

When you collect the car, take a quick video to record any existing damage (you should get an email of the pics sent to you).
When you return the car, always make sure it is looked over by the hire people while you are still present and agree and damage with them. Do not hand over your keys and go catch your flight, give yourself plenty of time to get this done, especially if you are leaving the country.

normal
usually they reserve the limit and not deduct completely until you return the car.

still reduces the available limit.

Last time we hired a car we were in Germany, we hired from budget and they took the max amount the bill could possibly be. That being the rental costs, plus extras like the excess and a full tank fuel payment. Sounds like that is what will happen for you. Then when we returned the car, they updated the amount just to the rental costs and released the rest. Note also a lot of airports attract a 10% premium location fee, and that was 10% of the total bill, including extras like the fuel payments etc not just the rental costs. We took the up sell on the insurance, decided this before we arrived, but they still held an extra almost £200 for fuel and an excess for possible windscreen damage or something, it didn't completely eliminate the extra payment they wanted upfront.

Thanks everyone. Seems like we'll just have to bite the bullet and accept it 😭

If you book through Zest, it includes all the extra insurances - you give the car hire company the prepaid voucher and decline their insurance. If anything happens you have to stump up with the car hire company and then claim back via Zest (same as with a stand alone excess policy).

Looks like some countries do have big security deposits (just looked at Kerry, Belfast and Edinburgh and they were all £1500 - £2000), but looking at Bordeaux or Copenhagen and it’s more like £500 - £600.

That's useful to know because I am planning to hire one at Edinburgh airport soon and haven't started looking yet.

£2,000 would make me wince too, especially if it’s going to basically max out your credit card for the whole week! I’ve hired cars from a few different companies before, including Avis, Budget, Europcar and qeeq, and thankfully the deposits I came across weren’t anywhere near that high. They do seem to vary massively depending on the supplier. I’d definitely shop around before booking, as £2,000 may not be the only option. If it’s going to tie up that much of your credit limit, I’d definitely look closely at the deposit as well as the rental price.