Travel or Car Insurance?

My limited experience with travel insurance is not that positive. It is a real pain to get them to pay a claim. They question everything and ask for irrelevant information that (IMHO) is primarily geared towards delaying payment. In the end I did get paid but had a small but totally unsubstantiated reduction applied. By then I was tired of dealing with them and just gave them the small amount to end my pain. I would never want them to be "responsible" for eventually paying for rental car damage. If you damage the car (and you will in Ireland), you will have the cost of the estimated damage, possibly the entire cost of the car and lost rental income, applied to your credit card. How's your limit now? I suggest you get the super CDW insurance in Ireland. Just remember it doesn't cover the tires.

Thank you for your reply. That's what I suspected. I thought the low rate was too good to be true. This is our 4th Ireland trip. We only had 1 car issue on our 2nd trip. (Although our friends traveling with us and other "Yanks" we met had more serious problems.) You just never know. We got the trip cancellation insurance because we are taking our 2 young daughters who always seem to be sick. We didn't want to lose thousands of dollars if we had to cancel. They sent us an offer to upgrade by adding car insurance; while it sounded good, I saw red flags.

I don't buy travel insurance and so far I haven't been sorry. For car insurance, AmEx has a really good deal on some of their cards (we used the Costco AmEx). You have to enroll your card, then a $25 or $29 one-time charge covers CDW for the entire rental. We used that in April for a trip around Spain. As usual, we didn't have a scratch on the car, but I wouldn't want to go without some insurance on the car. It's worth looking into.

We definitely need the travel ins. There were many trips we've done where we wished we had it. If anything, it's peace of mind. I am fairly certain that AmEx does not cover car rentals in Ireland (or Italy). I believe the only cards that do are Dining Club and MasterCard (there's 1 specific one that does). I also hear that to get a claim paid from them is very difficult.

Since you have already bought travel insurance, I'm responding to the general topic more than your individual question. Brad's logic is flawed. Would he say, I don't have fire insurance on my house, and so far I've never needed it? The part everyone needs is medical evacuation. Your health insurance may reimburse you for necessary treatment (but Medicare won't). At any rate, most emergency medical treatment in Europe is far less expensive than in the U.S. What can ruin you financially is the need, should it arise, to travel home in business or 1st class, possibly requiring 2 seats, possibly with a medical attendant. (Think body cast or IV apparatus.) Costs can run to $50,000. My daughter, who has worked in education-abroad for many years, alerted us to this. Even healthy, young people can have accidents. As to the ease of making a claim, I'm sure there's somewhere you can check out company ratings.
The person who mentioned the Amex restrictions is correct. Actually, I believe it's the 3 I's they don't cover: Italy, Ireland, and Israel.

Thanks, Rosalyn. We got the travel ins b/c we're paying for an expensive trip (with 2 young daughters--under 7yrs old). Our first Ireland trip, we were booked to travel with our best friends (another couple). The husband of the couple died suddenly, in Africa, 2 weeks before we were to leave. His wife did not have travel insurance and had to eat the cost of the trip. On our honeymoon a year later, I ended up with e.coli and had to be treated in a Canadian hospital. Before our England trip when my first daughter was 18mos old, she came down with something and we almost had to delay the trip......you get the picture. Sickness or problems undoubtedly befall us before we travel. I guess I have the "luck of the Irish". I've been doing research on the car insurance stuff, and it all seems so expensive. (I was the one who posted about the only 2 cards that work for it in Ireland.) I guess we'll just have to shell out the money for the CDW.