A deposit is not a price
The single most common confusion in car rental has nothing to do with cars. It is the gap between the rental price and the deposit.
The price is what the rental costs you. The deposit is what the company holds while the car is in your hands, and releases when the car comes back as it left. You are not spending the deposit. You are parking it.
That difference is easy to lose sight of when you are comparing offers in a market you don't rent in often. Two companies can quote the same daily rate and then ask for completely different things before the keys change hands — and it is that second requirement, not the rate, that decides whether the rental feels comfortable or awkward.
Why the habit grew here
In much of the world, deposits are almost invisible. The company takes a credit card, places an authorisation hold on it, and nobody thinks about it again until the hold drops off a statement weeks later. The whole arrangement rests on card infrastructure that does the trusting on the company's behalf.
Syria's rental market grew up without much of that infrastructure. Cars are expensive to replace, business runs largely in cash, and a company handing a vehicle to someone it met an hour ago needs the same reassurance any business anywhere needs. So the market improvised, using the ordinary instruments of a cash economy.
A visitor asking around Damascus will hear about several of them. Cash left with the office for the length of the rental. Signed papers held as security. A local guarantor — someone known in the area who signs alongside the renter. Documents proving where you live, sometimes down to a paper from the neighbourhood mukhtar. None of this is unusual by local standards; it is how a great deal of commerce is secured in the absence of card networks and credit records.
It is, however, genuinely hard on a visitor. Someone flying into Damascus for two weeks does not have a neighbourhood mukhtar, and may well not have a guarantor to call. This is exactly where a lot of rentals stall — not at the price, but at the paperwork behind it.
The forms a deposit takes
Whatever a company calls it, a deposit in this market usually takes one of three shapes.
Cash held. You leave an amount with the office at pickup and collect it at drop-off, after the car is checked. Straightforward, and the form most people picture when they hear the word.
A signed undertaking — sanad amaneh. This is a written instrument, well established in Syrian law and everyday commerce, in which you acknowledge responsibility for something entrusted to you. What matters for a renter is simple: you sign a paper, and no money leaves your pocket. The document is the security; it is settled and returned once the car is back.
A card hold. The familiar arrangement for anyone who has rented in Europe or the Gulf — an amount reserved on the card rather than charged, released after the rental closes.
Each of these secures the same thing in a different currency of trust. Which one suits you depends less on the rental company than on how you happen to be travelling.
How we handle it at Tab
Here is the honest version, and it is worth stating plainly because it is not the answer people expect: we do not have one deposit policy.
The deposit — both the amount and the form it takes — depends on the car. Each vehicle states it on its own page, the same page you book from.
The reasoning is not complicated. A small hatchback and a large SUV are not the same commitment, and a single blanket rule would have to be either too heavy for the modest car or too light for the expensive one. Setting it per vehicle lets each car carry what it actually warrants. Depending on the car, the form may be cash, a sanad amaneh, or a hold on your card — and where it is a sanad amaneh, that means signing a paper rather than handing over money.
The practical effect is the part we care about most: you find out before you book, on the same screen where you are choosing the car. Not at the counter, not after your flight has landed, not as a surprise while someone else waits behind you for the desk.
What to ask any company, including us
If you are comparing rentals in Syria, three questions will tell you most of what you need:
- What form does the deposit take — cash, a signed document, or a card hold?
- How much is it, for this specific car?
- When does it come back, and what has to be true for it to come back whole?
A company that can answer all three before you commit is one you can plan around. A company that answers them only at pickup is asking you to plan blind.
A few other things are worth confirming in the same breath, because they are the ones that quietly change the shape of a trip: the minimum driving age is 23 with us, we accept driving licences from every country with no nationality condition, fuel is handed over full and comes back full, and each car's kilometre allowance is listed on its own page. Cancellation is free, which means you can hold a booking while the rest of your plans settle.
Where to start
If you know roughly what you want to drive, the clearest next step is simply to look at the cars and read what each one asks for. Every deposit figure and every form is on the vehicle's own page.
Start with car rental in Damascus if you are picking up in the city, or browse the full range of pickup locations if you are arriving somewhere else, or planning to hand the car back in a different city from the one you collected it in — one-way rentals are available, and delivery is free at Damascus Airport and anywhere inside Damascus.