Car rental

Ok.. perhaps I could have scrolled down a bit.. I think 0 deductible us the way to go..

Dan Dooley is often recommended. Research your credit cards for CDW coverage in Ireland. We use USAA and they did cover it back in 2005.

"We use USAA and they did cover it back in 2005."
Careful there. We have USAA too but was advised in response to direct questioning a couple of years ago that neither my insurance policy or my credit card covered me in Ireland, and so had to book the going market rate with Hertz (the company we booked with on our last trip in 2014).
The matter of insurance coverage in Ireland is a frequent topic of discussion on this forum - you might do well to use the search function to review some of the recent commentary.
Dan Dooley is frequently recommended by travelers on the RS forum since they show the insurance right up front at booking so you know exactly what you're getting into, as opposed to having to drill down into the fine print with other rental car providers in order to discover what's covered and what isn't.
And I wouldn't necessarily trust that any credit card will cover you in Ireland, despite some of their representations to the contrary.

Thanks everyone..Steve

Thanks, Robert, that's why I included the date. Hopefully folks know they need to confirm for themselves!

We had a trip planned last year and we were going to use our Credit Card as coverage for the car. YES! I spoke directly to my credit card company and even had it in writing they would cover us. We had to cancel the trip last year due to some medical issues. We had spoken to a representative at Dan Dooley to get the low down on what would happen if we declined the coverage through them and we did in fact have an accident. First off they will place a $3,000 hold on your credit card. If the car is damaged and it is less than $3,000 they will fill out the necessary paper work (there is a charge for doing this) for you to submit to your credit card company. They will charge your credit card for the damage and then you have to work with your credit card company to get reimbursed. If it was over $3,000 they collected what was over directly from the credit card company. This leads me to believe that most damages are $3k or less. I am assuming that if they have trouble with the credit card company they will simply go back to you.

Our credit card also offered trip insurance so we had to send in paperwork to get reimbursed for our airline ticket. I am not going to say it was painful by any means but you do have to stay on top of things. After a month or so I called in for the status. The Dr. had not marked a box so it was being held up....uh, not sure how long it was going to take them to tell me they needed more information if I had not called in. The box not being marked was silly but it just goes to show that all the t's have to be crossed and the i's dotted. If I remember correctly it took about 8 weeks for the refund.

I guess what I am trying to say is be sure you understand who covers what and how it will work. It is not a matter of "oops, I had a mishap so reimburse me." Dan Dooley filled out paperwork for you....not sure if everyone else does that, PLUS you will have to fill out your credit cards paperwork and there may be information they want that isn't on the Dan Dooley paperwork.

Ireland is very hard on cars! For $80 I bought it down to zero deductible, we were then sideswiped by a hit and run driver. That $80 saved us $1350.00. Take your time, plan your route for inevitable stops along the way, it'll take longer to get there than first appears. We used Budget and were happy.

Dave, was that $80 a day or for the length of your trip....which would be one heck of a deal!

That was the whole trip, seven nights.

Driving in Ireland is definitely quite an experience. Nearly every Road outside of the main freeways have rock walls. Heck every house has a rock wall every business has a rock wall. Everybody has rock walls even the sheep have rock walls

There really are no shoulder along the road to speak of it's just a rock wall. So I can imagine how many rental cars come back with damage and that's one of the reasons the credit card companies don't include physical damage in Ireland like they do the other countries.

My wife does not allow me to drive any time there are curvy roads because she gets car sick very easily. So I only drove for about 2 hours total in 10 days in Ireland.

She had a little bit of a difficult time adjusting sometimes to driving on the wrong side of the road and having the steering wheel on the right side. With these walls so close there were a few times when branches and weeds actually scratched the left side of the car. It was pretty much unavoidable with oncoming traffic on such narrow roads.

The other thing was the rim on the left front tire got chewed up pretty good on curbs because she just isn't used to being on the wrong side of the car.

When we had gone to pick up our rental car our car was not available so they ended up giving us a Mercedes. Which is a bit nicer as far as the interior controls and whatnot. I was concerned when we dropped it off that they were going to ding us but they didn't say a word and we were Off to the Races.

I later talk to a gentleman that said he utterly destroyed the left side of his car so I guess we were fortunate

In case you haven't arranged for your rental yet....we found an automatic transmission from Ace on Travelocity and used the Travelocity insurance. It was considerably less than other companies. We used it for 10 of our 21 days in Ireland. Ace is a little of a hassle because you have to call them for a shuttle when you land, but if you can handle that, it can be hundreds of dollars less.

I always book with the US company Enterprise when they are available. I rented from Dublin airport for one week, took the full insurance coverage and paid under 200 euro in full for a manual transmission vehicle.

My family and I just returned from Ireland yesterday. We used Enterprise and were extremely happy with them. We had a standard sized car reserved, but it turned out to be to small (Both me and my teenage sons are over 6'2. They moved us into a Toyota Rav4 at no additional cost. We purchased the insurance with a 250 Euro deductible.

It is better to go through the Irish website not the US one - has saved us $ in the past! For example budget.ie not budget.com.