Still, the credit card may be needed in case of unpaid tolls/ parking tickets, which may get posted after a few weeks.
Btw, quite commonly in the US the debit cards have a Visa (MC) logo, so may be charged as such without the need for PIN. Only cash withdrawal will require a PIN. But I guess the card number identifies these as debit cards nevertheless.
https://faq.avisautonoleggio.it/Res-Channeling/Reservation-E...
In short, the translation is: prepaid cards (and only certain types, not Electron/Cirrus/etc) can be used to pay online only, and another card among those accepted (i.e. a credit card) should be presented at the desk.
The UK version of the FAQ tells basically the same:
https://faq.avis.co.uk/1492093922
"PREPAID cards are accepted online however they are not accepted at the counter which means a non-PREPAID card must be shown at the rental station (together with the PREPAID card)"
Always use a credit card for your own safety.
Can you elaborate? I live in europe and basically all mc/visa are actually debit cards. Yet i never had an issue with chargeback. In fact they always warn that it may take a long time to process with mc/visa. But the next day the bank refunds me the money tentatively already, presumably because they're confident i'll win?
That's not true. I'd expect that most of the credit cards are MC/Visa, and there are more debit cards in EU than credit cards, and among debit cards there are many debit MC/Visa, but that does mean that "basicall all mc/visa" in Europe are debit cards.
Edit. Found some stats. https://ec.europa.eu/competition/sectors/financial_services/... "Report on the application of Regulation (EU) 2015/751 on interchange fees for card-based payment transactions".
Page 24, Fig. 5 and page 25, Fig. 6. Debit cards in EU in 2016: 78% of the transactions are with domestic schemes, 99.5% of the rest were MC/Visa. Credit cards: 68% used domestic schemes, 94.3% of the rest were MC/Visa. It's not the most recent data, but still proves the point.
In other words, MC/Visa were used a lot both as credit cards, and as debit cards.
I doubt that is true, can you expand on that with some references?
I know there are many cards which are both a credit card and a debit card but that just means two cards in one package. But credit and debit are still fundamentally different networks with different rules. A debit transaction hits your account right away and the money has been taken out. A credit transaction settles later and can be paid from any source, it is not tied to any specific account.
Even for big purchases/traveling credit cards are not that common.
I will NEVER use Avis again and encourage everyone to do the same. !00% Scam company.
After the whole ordeal I called again and their sales department insists that they accept debit cards.