Choosing Your Rental Car Insurance Coverage
Trying to describe the extent and limitations of rental car insurance coverage isnt easy.
There are a number of possible variations depending upon the country and hire company concerned.
Here, well discuss a typical position as it applies in the UK and some other EU countries. You should note that in countries such as the USA the situation is commonly different from the EU.
Packaged rental car insurance coverage
Generally your policy may include:
- third party liability insurance policy to protect you against the financial consequences of someone claiming that you injured them or damaged their property with the rental car;
- CDW insurance which gives you peace of mind in the event of theft.
A few items to note even in the basics:
- if you dont have CDW (possible in some countries) then youll pay for all damage to the rental car including its possible replacement;
- you are responsible for destruction to the rental car even if you dont happen to be driving it at the time for example if it suffers hit-and-run damage in a car park where you left it;
- in the rental agreement, you typically sign and authorise the rental company to charge any such costs directly to your credit card.
Limitations of rental car insurance coverage
Even with these two forms of insurance in place, you may still not be fully protected:
you typically will remain liable for paying the excess on the policy an amount of money that may be as high as £1600;some areas of the rental car will typically be excluded from CDW protection this often includes the wheels, tyres, under-body areas and the glass items of the car.
These put together may involve you facing a bill of perhaps some thousands of pounds after an accident even if you have the rental companys inclusive basic insurance.
Further protection
Some rental agencies will offer to remove the excess and cover all areas of the car for an extra payment.
For a typically more cost-effective way of improving your rental car insurance protection, you could try the online specialist providers of hire car insurance.
They may offer car hire excess policies that will reimburse you if you receive an additional charge in these areas from the hire company.
Such policies may also offer things such as:
multiple additional named drivers;
annual policies to insure all cars you hire during the period.
As with any policy you may consider check out the terms and conditions to ensure you know what you are and are not protected against.
Tags: Car hire excess Insurance, car hire excess waiver, Car hire insurance