Car rental insurance

Do you have a credit card? Check with them about coverage for a rental car in Europe. Most major credit cards (not Discover) will cover you with a zero deductible.

For a day -- Buy their insurance. There have been horrid stories posted here and elsewhere when dealing with an accident in a foreign country and third party insurance companies. It is piece of mind.

I get the complete coverage.I dont want a hassle when Im thousands of miles away over a few bucks.

Before you buy their insurance be sure to check the deductible because it's usually VERY high.

I have a MasterCard that I use only for my European travels. It allows me to keep track of expenses, and it offers supplemental rental car insurance at no additional cost to me. You might already own a credit card with this feature and didn’t know it. In any case, if you read the fine print regarding rental car agencies’ supplemental insurance, the maximum coverage is often inadequate, or the deductible is sometimes very high.

Mastercard does not cover anything outside of the
car. If you use a cc to cover insurance, I would
get the rental agreement from the cc company
and look thru it thoroughly.

I checked with our credit card companies before our last trip to see about coverage and found that our American Express provided coverage however in order to qualify for their coverage you have to use the card to pay for the rental and must turn down all suplimental insurance offered by the rental agency. We did this as it saved us money. I suggest you check with your credit card companies to see what their policies are.

Elizabeht, I advise you to check with your credit card company. We rented a car in france which was broken in to. We had purchased the rental insurance through thr rental company, Hertz, and thought we were covered. We found out the insurance covers only accidents, not theft/burglary or damage to the car during the burglary. We contacted our credit cad company which we had used to pay for the car and found that the credit card insurance would have covered theft, damage during a theft, accidents, etc but since we had purchased the insurance from Hertz, it voided the credit card company insurance. We ended up pay $1,500 to Hertz. We had a lawyer in the US and France check into it for us and found that it was legal. Now we refuse any insurance the rental company offers and we have it in writing with us, what is covered when we rent. The only time we get insurance through the car company is when we lease,insurance is just like your car at home and included in the lease agreement.

I had a small accident while in Ireland. I had rented the car with my Mastercard (which covered rentals in Ireland), and I turned down the rental car company insurance as I had been instructed to do. When the claim was turned in to Mastercard, they turned it down because, they said, it was only valid for certain credit LIMITS -- in my case, it was a limit double what I had. I suspect they would have said the same thing no matter what limit I had, so now I always take the rental company insurance. It's just not worth the hassle to save a few dollars if there is a problem. In my case, I "saved" the cost of the rental co. insurance, but had to pay the repair out of my pocket because Mastercard refused it.