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Thursday 20 October 2011

Do you buy your car hire excess insurance from an independent provider?

When you do your local supermarket shopping you will see X product or Y product on the shelf for a price. If you suddenly arrived at the checkout and were told that you would have to pay an additional amount you would not be too happy.

Unfortunately with a lot of car hire operations you do not appear to pay the price that you saw "on the shelf". Some of the extras are easy to explain - It's half term holiday time and you are taking your two small children to Portugal for a week. You don't want to have to bring your child seats with you, so you expect to pay extra to rent them from the car hire company.

Until all cars come with sat navigation, then you will have to rent these as well, although they are a lot easier to transport to Portugal for that holiday than child seats!

The one "extra" that you will normally be asked to buy at the car hire check in desk is for excess insurance.   When you rent a car, you will find that your car rental agreement normally includes cover for Collision Damage Waiver - CDW (damage to the rental vehicle) and Theft. There is almost always an excess on the Collision Damage Waiver and Theft.

Unfortunately the person who hires the car (van or motorhome) is  still liable for the Excess on CDW and Theft. When a rental car is damaged or stolen, the driver is asked to pay the first portion of the repair or replacement costs. This is known as the Excess.

Fortunately for a low annual or daily premium a car hire excess insurance company can provide excess insurance protecting the customer against excess charges whenever he / she  rents a car/van/motorhome.

Buying the insurance policy from an independent provider like the ones advertising here at insurance4carrental.com  will normally be a lot cheaper than buying one from the vehicle hire company.

What is more you can buy annual policies if you are going to be renting a car for more than once a year (or if you are renting for two or more weeks it works cheaper usually).

Just make sure when you collect the car you state to their representative that you don't want their excess insurance as you have your own and take a print off of the poilcy with you in case you need to make a claim.

Some car hire company staff are under a great deal of pressure to seel their insurance products, you have to decline if you have saved money and bought in advance. I bought a new microwave in England last month. It cost £49 and the person at the check out was rather insistent I bought their insurance in case it went wrong. £49 microwaves are part of out "throwaway" society, but expensive cars are not, so you must make sure you are properly insured.

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