Originally Posted by koreth

I'm taking a trip to Florida next week and reserved a car with Sixt for the first time. I was a bit shocked when the customer service rep told me I had to bring along a bank statement or a utility bill or my passport along with my driver's license. I've traveled domestically in the USA a fair bit and rented cars from most of the big rental companies, and I've never been asked to provide this kind of documentation. I'm not really in the habit of vacationing with my financial records or carrying my passport for domestic travel!

I'm trying to figure out the point of this exercise.

• Sixt has my credit card number. So if I steal the car, in addition to reporting me to the police they can charge me to my credit limit each month until it's paid for. They can match the credit card name and billing address to the name and address on my license to confirm it's my card.
• But say they're afraid I've forged my driver's license. If I'm crafty and dedicated enough to do that, am I going to really be stopped dead in my tracks at the prospect of forging a utility bill too?
• If they want to see that my government-issued ID photo looks like my government-issued ID photo, a bank statement won't help. If they want to see that the home address on my driver's license matches the home address on my bank statement, my passport won't help since it doesn't even say which state I live in, let alone my address. Other than my name there seems to me to be nothing at all that they could reliably verify by demanding either a passport or a bank statement but not both.

Can someone tell me why I should cough up personal information rather than cancelling my reservation and renting from a company that doesn't require me to jump through hoops? Is this perhaps a legal requirement in Florida?