webmaster

Friday 25 September 2009

Van Hire Excess Insurance in the UK now available


A news release was circulated today to the web media including Insurance Daily.

insurance4carrental.com has announced it is now able to act as an introducer for van hire daily excess insurance.

It will cover Excess payable on the damage and theft portions of the van rental up to £1000 in any one incident, covers the policy holder and all additional named drivers (maximum seven) and can be used at all van rental locations and with all licensed van rental companies.

That is good news for those people who rent vans. More details are Here

Wednesday 23 September 2009

Car Hire hidden rental costs


Came accross this article the other day Car rental hidden costs it was on a wensite called "The Independent Traveler", an American website that started life in 1990.
We contacted them to see if we could publish the article as it seemed rather relevant to the insurance4carrental.com site.
We were very pleased they agreed and although the article is directed to the American audience, it does have a lot of valid points that are applicable to anyone hiring a car.
If you have had problems when renting, please reply on this blog as there appear to be a lot of people who pay additional costs that they need not do.

Tuesday 22 September 2009

Hiring a car can be more expensive than you Budgeted for

Renting a car in Dublin can be a lot more expensive than you thought. That car advertised at £35 per day suddenly becomes nearly £60 per day. It can’t help the tourist market at the moment so look out for the hidden charges.

Fortunately I only rent a car approximately four times a year, as taking a city break, the beauty of such a trip is not having to drive, find your way about or park.

There are however times when my wife and I have to rent a car, although our recent experiences have just been in France and Ireland.

Renting a car in France has always proved very straightforward apart from one occasion in 2000 renting an easyCar Mercedes in the south of France. We normally book on line , pay and know that we won’t be paying any additional charges that could come out of the blue when we go to the check in desk of the car hire company.

Following on from the incident in 2000, when we heard about Larry Dale Ursich’s company insurance4carhire being publicised one Saturday a few years ago were quick to buy the annual excess insurance policy.

Since then our company jml Property Services has become an introducer agent and through various web sits in the jml Group including http://www.insurance4carrental.com/ has generated over £87,000 worth of business for them. We therefore don’t buy the product from the car hire company as it is normally more expensive that way.

We quite often visit Dublin, Ireland and if we don’t make a long drive and sea crossing, take a short flight from the greater London area. Unfortunately the rental experience is never the same as it is in France.

The impression is that although you have made your booking, paid for it there will suddenly be little extras when you go to collect a car. One of these little extras is a €28 airport charge. We have discovered that some rental companies even make this charge if you collect the car from a city centre depot and go nowhere near the airport!

Another charge is a credit card charge, admittedly only €5.29, however it would nice to have these charges included in the “estimate price” and not added on for when you go to collect the car.

Airlines had the habit of offering very cheap flights that attracted you to fly and then when you went to book found the price had trebled because of all the fees and local taxes. We consumers like to know how we stand so we can budget accordingly. You would not be very pleased going to the local supermarket or petrol station and then just before you paid told you had to pay a compulsory charge.

In late August we made a mistake with a booking on a five day rental in Dublin. The booking was made on line and we did not accept the CDW Insurance. Collision damage waiver (CDW), sometimes confusingly also called loss damage waiver (LDW), is essentially a form of insurance that may or may not come included in the rental price of a hired car. It exists to provide cover for damage that occurs to the rented vehicle itself.

It appears that if you are paying with some American credit cards they may allow you to waive this charge. The actual daily rental quoted with the CDW was not much more than with, however going through at least three car hire providers websites for comparative pricing got somewhat confusing. We paid £167.39 on line for the five days rental .

When my wife went to collect the car, she was told as we had declined the CDW we would have to pay an additional amount of £14 a day which is more than the price would have been for an inclusive daily rate, but obviously the car hire company would want an admin fee.

She was asked to pay a further £191.39 that included a full tank of petrol. (In France we have always found that the car comes with a full tank of fuel, the car hire company swipes the credit card, but does not debit it and at the end of the rental, provided the car comes back full there is no further activity on the card) We have always been charged for fuel straightaway at Dublin.

After the car was returned full of fuel and the next credit card statement came in there was a refund of £68.80. This means that an additional amount of £122.59 was added to the rental price of £167.39 making the total rental for 5 days £289.98 ( or £57.99 per day) for the lowest price card.

My wife was told she was given a free upgrade, but it looks like she had to pay for it!. When we emailed the car hire company about the charges they simply stated they were correct.
It is most important that whenever you book a car rental that you check thoroughly to see if the price is inclusive of collection, road tax, credit cards etc.

Some car rental companies charge for additional drivers, some only charge for more than one additional driver. Most car hire companies charge for car hire excess insurance unless you have arranged this yourself and of course you could be paying more for roof racks and child seats.

The cheapest car rental price, may not in fact be the cheapest one by the time the add ons arrive.

There are airport fees at Dublin, it would be interesting to hear from other people if many other airports have these and which ones. If you can help we would like to compile a list and what they charge.

Thursday 17 September 2009

insurance4carrental has just joined Twitter



insurance4carrental has just joined Twitter.

Now you can check out our Tweets and start following us as we will follow others.

We will continue to run information on hiring cars here on this blog site and add the alerts to Twitter.

In case you want to follow insurance4carrental.com on Twitter follow this link
http://twitter.com/ins4carrental

Wednesday 16 September 2009

Excess insurance could wipe out over £524million of consumers' costs

Got this information from a press release earlier in week, although the release is a few months old, it looks good.

Cash-strapped consumers spend a yearly average of £524million* on motor and home excesses so in a bid to help them recoup their costs on these and other insurances, insure4excess.com has launched a policy that reimburses claimants' payouts to insurers.

Known as Excess Protection, the annual policy covers excess costs incurred on motor, home, travel, pet and private medical insurance policies - ensuring consumers no longer have to 'write off' substantial amounts when making a claim.

Insure4excess underwriters estimate the average excesses for the five most commonly-held policies total around £540. Claimants' liabilities are around £100 for home, travel and private medical insurance, £180 for motor and £60 for pet. More on this here

Thursday 10 September 2009

Affiliate website car Hire Excess Insurance

We came across a website recently that was informing prospective web providers about affiliate plans on offer.

One of these was for insurance4carhire.com offering Car Hire Excess Insurance and Car Rental Excess Insurance. The information this company was providing was:

Background

Insurance4CarHire sells excess insurance for consumers hiring a motor vehicle. When a consumer hires a vehicle, insurance4carhire can protect the user for any claims or damages that are made, requiring them to pay their excess. With Insurance4carhire, the excess is protected and the consumer doesn’t pay.

Products

Annual policies from £49 (their biggest seller) protect the user for any car hire contracts they take out across the territory of the product. The more expensive products cover worldwide territories as well as extended driving time of up to 60 days. I4CH also sells a daily package for around £4 per day however this will be only a small part of the programme.

All very interesting, to find out more about car hire excess companies go into www.insurance4carrental.com where you can learn more about both insurance4carhire.com and Questor car hire excess insurance.