charging the rental car

Why?

You should use the credit card with the lowest foreign transaction fees. I assume they both have adequate credit lines that they will not exceed their limits.

There's several reasons not to go by FTF alone. But,the difference between them probably isn't one percent. Figure twenty-five bucks a day? Two bits daily shouldn't be the decision maker. Once more. Why the question?

Sorry, more explanation needed. We have read and heard that if you do not carry the insurance offered by the rental company and choose to rely on the insurance provided through the credit card company, that the rental company can put a large hold on your credit card. This would tie up large amount of available credit that you may need.

The hold will happen whether you purchase the insurance or not. The hold is only placed on the credit limit of your card, you will not be "charged" anything other than the standard rental fees. It's more of an issue if you use a debit card, as the hold will be placed on the funds in your checking account as debit cards don't have credit limits.

Exactly.

Michael, if you buy insurance the hold is usually something up to the deductible or less. If you don't buy insurance from the rental company, some will put very large holds on your CC, I read about Sixty putting a € 8000 hold on a no-insurance rental in Spain.

My three credit cards have a credit limit of $20,000 each. Since I typically pay off my CC bills each month, even a 16,000 euro hold would have no impact on me.

Cynthia, I do what you suggest in your question. For the most part, I limit using my American Express card only for booking airline flights and rental cars and occasional car expenses when Amex is accepted. The rental car part is important becaue I use Amex Premium insurance for the car rentals. For practically everything else, I use a Visa card, partly because a lot of places will not accept American Express, but also so I don't have to worry about the Visa card being hit by a hold on funds.

I use a very similar plan as Roy with the AMEX and visa cards. If you use the credit card for your insurance be sure to use that same credit card for all expenses related to the car rental otherwise it will void the coverage.

I usually earmark one card for the rental and don't use it for anything else, so I don't have to worry about the amount of the hold versus my limit. I have plenty of credit cards, so that's simple. I'm not sure what the amount of the hold has been in the past, but on a recent trip to France, I don't think Europcar put much of a hold on my card even though I didn't take any CDW insurance.