7 Mistakes to Avoid When Renting a Car in Florida
Most rental problems are cheap to prevent and expensive to fix. Nearly all of them are decided before anyone touches a key — in what you booked, wh...
Read more →What Documents Do You Need to Rent a Car in Florida?
Four things, and you must be 23. A valid driver's license, a payment card in your own name, a completed identity check, and liability coverage — either your own auto insurance, verified during booking, or ours at $33 a day.
That's the entire list. Everything below is the detail behind those four items and the handful of things that actually hold a booking up.
We're delivery-only, so there's no counter to sort anything out at. Whatever is unfinished when the car arrives is unfinished in your driveway. Getting it done during booking is the difference between a five-minute handover and a phone call.
1. A valid driver's license
Every person who will drive needs one. Yours has to be unexpired, readable, valid for the whole rental period, and issued in your legal name.
We'll ask you to photograph the front and back during booking. Good light, no glare, all four corners in frame — most re-submissions are a thumb over the edge or a reflection across the hologram.
You don't need a Florida license. Any valid US state license works, and that's the majority of what we see. Visitors should use the license from their home state.
Use the same legal name on the reservation, the license, the card and the insurance policy. A nickname on the booking or a surname that changed after a marriage is the most common reason a verification comes back for a second look.
2. Identity verification
Uploading the license is half of it. You'll also take a selfie and complete a liveness check, which confirms a real person is present and that the face matches the license photo.
Do this yourself. A partner, a colleague or an assistant completing the booking on your behalf is the one failure we can't work around — the check compares the person in front of the camera to the license being submitted, so it fails by design.
It takes about two minutes on a phone with a decent connection. It exists because we hand a car to someone we have never met, at an address that isn't ours.
3. A card in your own name
Credit or debit, both work, and it has to belong to you. The card covers the rental, delivery, taxes, any coverage you buy, and the refundable deposit hold.
Make sure there's headroom for both the rental and the $300 hold at the same time. On a debit card that's real money temporarily out of your balance, which catches people out on a tight account.
How the $300 deposit actually works
We place a $300 refundable hold on your card for every rental. It's an authorization, not a charge — it reduces your available balance while the rental is live and it comes back when you return the car.
We capture against it only if there's damage. Once we release it, how quickly the money reappears is between you and your bank; a couple of business days is typical.
Other charges — tolls, fuel, mileage over 200 miles a day at $0.35 a mile, cleaning, a late return — are billed separately if they apply. They aren't taken out of the deposit hold.
4. Liability coverage — yours or ours
Every rental needs qualifying liability coverage. There are two ways to get there.
Use your own policy. Provide your insurance details during booking and we verify whether the coverage qualifies. If it does, you pay nothing extra. Have the insurer name, policyholder name, policy number, effective and expiry dates, and the covered drivers and vehicles to hand.
Or take ours. Renter liability coverage is $33 per rental day and it's what you need if you don't have a personal policy we can verify. No policy of your own is a completely normal way to rent — it just has a price attached.
Don't assume a personal policy travels to every rental. Coverage can turn on the driver, the vehicle, the purpose of the trip and where you're going. If you're not certain, ask your insurer before you book, not on delivery day.
A damage waiver is a different product and always optional. Liability coverage answers for harm to other people and their property; a waiver reduces what you owe for damage to our car. Ours are $14.95 a day with a $1,000 deductible, or $24.95 a day with a $250 deductible. Buying a waiver does not satisfy the liability requirement.
The full comparison is in renting a car without your own insurance.
Does my credit card cover it?
Some cards offer a rental damage benefit. Almost none provide liability coverage, which is the part we're required to verify — so a card benefit generally won't remove the need for your own policy or ours.
If you intend to rely on one, check with the issuer first: whether the benefit is primary or secondary, which vehicles and countries qualify, how long a rental it covers, and what you'd have to document after a claim. Then tell us, so we can confirm what it does and doesn't satisfy before you're standing next to the car.
Anyone else who will drive
Only approved drivers may drive. A spouse, a parent, a friend swapping over halfway to Miami — each has to be named and approved in advance. Your permission isn't the thing that authorises them; ours is.
For each additional driver we need a valid license, legal name, date of birth, contact details and their own identity verification. Add them during booking rather than mid-trip, when it turns into a phone call from a parking lot.
Letting an unapproved driver take the wheel breaches the rental agreement and can unravel coverage entirely if something happens. It's the single most expensive shortcut on this page.
How old do you have to be?
At least 23, with a valid license, for the renter and every additional driver.
There's no young-driver fee — a 23-year-old pays exactly what a 45-year-old pays. Plenty of Florida rental companies rent from 21 and then add $25 to $40 a day for it; we'd rather have one clean age line than a surcharge.
Meeting the age doesn't skip the rest. License, identity, payment and coverage still have to check out.
Renting on an international license
We can rent to international visitors when the license and identity verify successfully. Florida recognises valid foreign licenses for eligible visitors, and our own verification is the additional step.
Have ready:
- Your valid license from your country of residence
- Your passport — for international renters we may ask for it to confirm identity
- A readable translation, or an International Driving Permit, if the license isn't in English
- Your permanent home address and current contact details
An International Driving Permit is a translation, not a license. Carry the original alongside it.
If your license uses a non-Latin script or an unusual format, message us before you book rather than after you land. Verification results vary by country and it's a much easier conversation with a week in hand than with a flight already on the ground.
Renting on a US license? You'll never need a passport. It isn't part of the domestic process.
Where we deliver
Give us the exact address during booking, not just a city. We deliver across Broward:
- Hollywood, Dania Beach — free
- Fort Lauderdale, Hallandale Beach — $20
- Aventura, Davie — $30
Depending on where you are, we may also need the hotel or building name, a unit number, gate or visitor access instructions, valet or parking details, or a workable meeting point. A gated community with no code and no callbox name is the most common reason a delivery runs late.
How delivery works covers the process end to end.
When we're open — and why it matters
We're open seven days a week — Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, and Saturday and Sunday, 8am to 2pm. You can book online at any hour, but a car has to be delivered inside those windows, and anything needing a human — a verification that didn't clear automatically, a late addition to the driver list, an unusual license — waits for the next one.
In practice: weekends close at 2pm. A request that arrives Saturday afternoon gets picked up Sunday morning, so leave a few hours of open time for any same-day booking to clear.
What actually holds a booking up
Submitting a booking isn't the same as having it approved. These are the things that come back for a second look, roughly in order of how often we see them:
- Blurry or cropped license photos
- A name that doesn't match between the license, the reservation and the card
- A card belonging to someone else
- Not enough available balance for the rental plus the $300 hold
- Insurance we can't verify, and no renter coverage selected
- The selfie or liveness check left half-finished
- An additional driver mentioned but never added
- A delivery address that's a neighborhood rather than an address
- Verification started too close to the delivery time — or outside our hours
Every one of those is fixable in minutes if you catch the message. Answer it when it lands and the booking usually clears the same day.
The checklist
Before you start:
- Everyone driving is 23 or over, with a valid unexpired license
- Your full legal name, used consistently everywhere
- A credit or debit card in your own name, with room for the rental and $300
- Your insurance details, or the intention to take our $33-a-day coverage
- A phone with a working camera, in decent light
- The exact delivery address, with access instructions
- Details for every person who might drive
- Passport and a translation or IDP, if you're renting on a non-US license
On delivery day the paperwork should already be done, so all you need is your license, your phone, and a few minutes to walk round the car — check the fuel level and mileage, photograph anything already marked, and confirm the return time before we leave.
What to expect when your car is delivered covers that handover properly.
What it costs
The 2024 Volkswagen Jetta and the 2023 Volkswagen Taos are both $65 a day — same price, sedan or SUV. A week or more takes 10% off the rate and a month or more takes 20%. Delivery, taxes and any coverage are itemized before you pay, and canceling 24 hours or more before your start time is a full refund.
