BY TONEY ATKINS
Thinking about renting a car with a prepaid Visa or MasterCard? Well, prepare yourself for a royal nightmare if you have to extend the car rental and handle it the way I did.
Two days ago, I received an e-mail from WiredPlastic.com informing me that my available balance was a little more than a comfortable $700. Yesterday, I was literally stunned when I received an e-mail from the prepaid card company notifying me that an important payment had been denied because I was more than $100 in the red.
More than a little alarmed, I went to Wired Plastic's web site and discovered something truly disturbing. My initial thought as the page opened was that I had been a victim of identity theft. As it turns out, the company had suddenly held back more than $800 as an "authorization" from the car rental agency -- with the date of the authorization being Sept. 1.
This issue presumably had been resolved shortly after the rental firm had submitted the final total due at mid-month. That took hours of valuable time (and money) in talking to representatives of Wired Plastic and sending them a fax of the final payment, then making more calls.
In effect, in addition to the settled amount of more than $1,000 (outrageous in itself), Wired Plastic is presently holding more than $800 of my money, making the three-week car rental amount to more than $1,800!!!
This isn't the first time this has happened when I had to extend a rental while using a prepaid Visa or MasterCard, and Wired Plastic hasn't been the only problem.
In the latest case, after my father passed away, his vehicle, which I had been driving, stopped on me. There were a lot of things to take care of, in addition to the possibility of returning to the state where I had lived more than 30 years to retrieve my belongings, so I rented an economy car.
The initial amount held on my account was several hundred dollars. When I returned the vehicle on Sept. 1, I asked for an extension on the rental. The $800-plus was then held from the funds available to me, including a second deposit. This showed up as two separate authorizations at Wired Plastic. When I returned the car on the due date, the final charge was sent to the card company and was settled. Yet, the previous authorizations were still there, meaning I did not have access to the funds.
"The double charge comes from the rental company not canceling their first authorization when they claim their final amount. They run through a second transaction rather than closing the first one," a representative of Wired Plastic told me nearly two weeks ago.
The aforementioned ordeal of trying to get this straightened out, proving that both authorizations were for the same rental, was eventually resolved -- I thought.
Yesterday, the Sept. 1 authorization suddenly reappeared, without any reasonable explanation being given to me by Wired Plastic. Now this, mind you, was on Sept. 28.
I rarely lose my temper, but I certainly did when I called and literally demanded that the matter be straightened out. The fax I had sent weeks ago apparently was nowhere to be found, so here we go again!
Car rental firms are leery about debit cards anyway, and I now can understand why. They have to authorize a rental, as well as an extension, and how they do it can add up to a chunk of change ... and it's not their fault.
For the most part, my relations with Wired Plastic and the firm that previously handled my payroll funds in a debit card have been excellent. The cards with the Visa or MasterCard logos can be used as credit cards, although you are using your own money, and that, for me, has been better than carrying cash.
My recommendation to the reader: If you plan to use a prepaid Visa or MasterCard debit card to rent a vehicle of any kind and find that you need to extend the rental, close out the first charge and make the extension a new rental ... a totally separate charge that won't cause any problems when it gets to the card company, which can hold an authorization up to six months if the charge is not settled.
If you work hard for your money and have to rely on every cent just to survive in this day and age, you will save yourself a lot of grief, headaches and access to your money by following the procedure in the paragraph above. By nature, I always have to learn things the hard way, so at the moment, my blood pressure isn't so good and I have a major headache.
I pray that my experience will help those of you who don't have "real" credit cards to avoid these unpleasant and unnecessary health issues and the wasting of your time and hard-earned dollars.
P.S. This postscript is being written less than 10 hours after the above text. Wired Plastic took care of the problem early this morning, and the funds were made available to me again. Let me emphasize that I give Wired Plastic a good rating and, for the most part, trust them with my money as a prepaid debit/credit card firm. This was my first major issue with the company, and it was resolved quickly, for which I am grateful.
There are still vital lessons here. This could happen with any such company, and I strongly advise that you regularly check balances and transactions if you have such an account. I have still received no explanation as to why the error occurred, but I am satisfied that it has been corrected. I will continue, with a watchful eye, to do business with the company.
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