I am planning a trip for spring of 2010 to the British Isle for 3 weeks. I would love to rent a car to travel around at our own pace (3 travelers). However the price of the collision damage waivers and extra insurance fees are more than the car rental itself! I do not have a Visa Gold Card but I am pursuing other insurance options. I've found a website called confused.com which offers Car Hire Excess Insurance. Will this be accepted by rental companies? Does anyone have advice to offer?
Thanks in advance.
Posted by
Atlanta
1358 posts
I checked with my Visa before our last trip to Ireland, and was worried because they don't offer liability. I didn't want that sitting on my shoulders.
So what we did was to get the CDW through the rental company, as it wasn't much more than the cost of the rental. The excess insurance through the rental company is expensive, though. We went through insurance4carhire (you'll actually go to another website, dailyexcess.com) for the excess insurance, which cost about 1/3 of what the rental company wanted for the same coverage. If something does happen, the rental company has a deductible, usually around 1000 euro, that will be charged to your card. You then file a claim with insurance4carhire. We had to file a claim this summer, and it took a while to get a response, but we did get fully reimbursed. Take a copy of your policy with you, not so much for the rental company, but for yourself, so you'll know what you need to do to file a claim, like what papers you'll need to keep.
If you go this way, I would get a credit card that doesn't charge foreign transaction fees, like Capitol One. I never used my card much overseas, so I didn't worry about the fees much, but in this case, the fees were about $50.
Posted by
Auburn, Alabama
1064 posts
One alternative I am investigating is the American Express Premium Rental Car Protection Plan. It seems to provide better protection than basic insurance provided by credit cards, and the rate is much cheaper than those of the rental car companies. But you have to have and use an AmEx card for the rental. I have not used this coverage yet, but I would be interested in any experience that others have had with it.The Web site is https://www152.americanexpress.com/premium/car-rental-insurance-coverage/home.do?source=OPEN
Posted by
Pensacola
9110 posts
You've brought up three seperate issues:
Not sure what "extra insurance fees" are if not CDW. I have pretty good limits already and can't help you there -- it's never been something I've come across.
CDW issue is easy to beat. I have two programs available to me:
a. All AmExp cards have a provision which you sign up for in advance and whenever you rent a car on the card, they automatically tack on about $35 to your card which covers CDW for the duration of the rental period.
b. My AAA Visa (Bank of America) automatically covers CDW. It's platinum, but not sure this matters.
Now the first kicker: neither covers CDW for cars rented in Italy, Isreal, IRELAND, and a few other countries. Note that the operative words are "rented in" -- I'm fine if I rent elsewhere and take the car into these countries. Here's the second kicker (and I'm on unfirm ground here) rental companies (in my experience) in the UK prohibit takeing their cars into Ireland. What I do is leave the UK-rented car at the airport/ferry, go to Ireland, and rent another car (paying the CDW myself). Alternatively, you could leave the car in the UK, go to Ireland, and use public transportation. If this were my first trip to Britain, I'd probably skip Ireland and have a ball in Wales.
Posted by
Atlanta
1358 posts
The extra insurance fees are for extra coverage to cover the deductible for the CDW, which is usually somewhere around 1000 euro.