Avatar really is a case study in mismanagement. At it’s core an engaging story with deep characters and lore with many parts unexplored, with a special place in many hearts after the initial series. The perfect ingredients to turn into a lifelong franchise. Yet it cannot seem to shed the curse of rights holders and suits smothering it’s potential success.

Also, you are just wrong about the big names you mentioned:

You never said your statement was just about airport car rentals. Over here that is very likely not the most common usage of rentals (and certainly if you exclude business travel and holidays), since airports are far between, but car rentals are all over the place, far away from those airports. You rent cars over here if you dont own a car and need transportation. Or if you have to move a large amount of items you rent a van.

Besides, you can simply take the bus or train from any airport to a real car rental which should be close by in any major city. Of course if you go do it in a business hub you will find scams for the average person. Does that sacrifice a little bit of convenience, sure. But if you buy all your water from street vendors at a tourist attraction we dont claim water is expensive.

I can see you are simply from a very different world, that of business travel, which is why your perspective is so different.

EDIT: And no, I didn’t use a mom and pop shop, I used the biggest car renter in my country (Netherlands) with over 130 locations.

How are you getting a credit card in that last situation? You need a steady income and good credit that is able to pay the full credit at the end of the month to even apply for one. Which your hypothetical doesnt have…

And as the other person said, it’s pretty ridiculous to go rent a car if you’re in that situation because of how cheap and good public transportation is.

There’s nothing you need to ‘manage’ about getting money back aside from checking your bank statement to make sure it went well. You would have to check that on your credit card statements too because deposit theft can happen just the same there too. But deposit theft is crazy uncommon to begin with.

And deposits are typically not 1k around here but like maybe 100-200 bucks at best, and on the lower end for your poor smuck example too.

How is a deposit not practical? Unless they require it in cash that has to then at the end be picked up at the pickup point (which would be crazy)? A rental company is taking a huge risk by renting cars to any random person with a driving license. It’s the same reason they don’t typically rent to people below 25 (or without a higher deposit).

It’s really only unpractical if you don’t have enough money on your account to afford the deposit, but then why are you renting cars? Otherwise you just pay a bit more the first time and then get that money deposited back on your account when you return the car. There’s basically no difference in the end other than a bigger number the first time, and if you wreck the car or something, you will lose the deposit through your credit card too.

I think you are making too sweeping of a statement here. Maybe this is the case for car rentals you encounter / have access to but the response should show that’s not the case everywhere in the EU. I rented a car without a credit card over 5 years ago where I’m from. You do pay a deposit that I suppose a credit card would normally insure for, but the option exists. Either way, if a car rental requires a credit card, I would not even consider renting with them. That’s ridiculous.