Car hire excess reimbursement insurance

kimajy

kimajy

Well-Known Member
Just thought I'd post a link to an excellent standalone policy which I've taken out on many occasions but recently had the misfortune to have to make a claim against on account of a blown-out tyre and subsequent damage whilst in Ibiza.

The policy included loss of keys (which many do not) - although this was not the reason for my own claim.

The premium for my hire of up to 3 days was £5.70.

The premium is almost always far less than the options offered by car hire companies when a car is taken out and the insurance may be purchased by residents of any country for hires in any other country. Premiums are a little more if the hire is in your country of residence (but not much).

Avis charged me around 700 Euros for the tyre, damage and administration fees, being capped at the excess liability. A claim form was e-mailed out straight away when I returned and reported the claim, which was posted off and handled by Axa Assistance within 10 working days of receipt.

I had to supply various documentation the most important of which was a copy driving licence, the original final rental contract showing a breakdown of costs, a copy invoice (downloaded from Avis website and e-mailed subsequently on enquiry) and a copy credit card statement showing the actual costs incurred in sterling.

The claim was efficiently dealt with and payment made within a further 10 working days of approval. Highly recommended - will always take this out when renting a car in future though I hope I don't have cause to have to claim again !

Link to provider :

http://www.worldwideinsure.com/car-hire-excess-insurance.php
 
Thanks for the tip. Will use for futur rentals.
True, the excess insurance of rental agents, is a big rip off.
 
Bookmarked for future use thanks!

I dont usually take out the extra insurance as it is around 50 euros each trip, and I havent ever needed to pay the excess. After 7 trips, even if I had to pay the excess of 300 euros, which is what the company I use charges, I still wouldn't be out of pocket compared to paying the 50 euros each trip.

But at this price it might be worth it to save the small worry.
 
could you explain in layman's terms how this works as ive never had to deal with this stuff before but would be useful to know for future ref. is this just an alternative to the extra insurance they off you when you book?
 
If you book your car with a Visa Platinum or MasterCard Black card you have this kind of insurance automatically.

Just sayin'...
 
not hired a car in ibiza for a while, but elsewhere this charge has always been fairly reasonable. i.e. 10-15€.

obviously they play on your fear of having to pay 800€ and the stupidity of not taking the 10-15€ extra.

kima - are you saying it's different in ibiza?
 
MiniMarc said:
could you explain in layman's terms how this works as ive never had to deal with this stuff before but would be useful to know for future ref. is this just an alternative to the extra insurance they off you when you book?
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Basically, yes - more info below !!

It's a bit of a minefield renting cars as far as what is covered in the case of a mishap and what is not. In USA for example you're liable for the whole car loss unless you take out or have some form of insurance. It's often the case there that it's not mandatory to take any insurance from the car rental company. You can easily get total loss insurance from the car rental company which is generally pretty good. If you live there standalone insurance is easy to find too, as an alternative.

It varies from company to company and from country to country in Europe but you tend to get a bunch of insurances (Theft, Collission etc) included as mandatory standard cover from the rental company with most reputable firms, but Personal Accident Insurance is usually an optional extra. Many standard insurances specifically exclude damage to glass, tyres and underbody of the car as well as loss of keys and towing i.e. the bits which you're most likely to need to claim for :!:.

On top of this, you often assume a standard excess liability against what is insured, which can be steep (especially if you have a 'free upgrade' etc - worst I had this year was 1,000 Euros when I got upgraded to a Grande Picasso at the airport). That means if you bring the car back with scratches, damage etc you are charged up to the excess and the rest is covered by the mandatory insurance. Funnily enough (:roll:) they always seem to manage to find ways of racking the costs up to the full excess if there's a problem and it's not hard to run up hundreds of euros in liability over a relatively small event.

Some companies then offer you an optional excess waiver which pays up your excess liability in the event of a claim (though again often subject to exclusions). This can easily run to 10 Euros a day or more - way more than a good value standalone policy.

Now some standalone policies are better than others ... I had one of those "everything covered" rentals last year when I lost a rental car key in the sea wakeboarding (:oops: - forgot it was in my shorts pocket and had a nasty shock when I got back in). Only to find that the Mondial policy I had excluded loss of keys ... and towing costs associated with same !!!! To cut a long story short, basically I got done for about 200 Euros of the costs.

Now I get excess insurance from the guys above and rent from whoever I like without worrying about this - the cover is very comprehensive and means I can just forget about rip-off deals from car hire companies and 'search engine' based 'all-inclusive' car hire offers (Car Hire 3000 and the like etc.).. which sometimes wind up not to be such great deals in the end.

The downside of this approach is you have to pay up the excess and claim it back (cash flow), but the peace of mind that if the worst happens you're not facing hundreds of euros in losses is worth it imo - and I won't pay 10 Euros a day to a car hire company on a regular basis when I can get a really good deal like the one above. Especially on a short hire it's a no-brainer.

I used to have a fancy Amex card which purported to cover this sort of thing as well as including travel insurance - but when I looked at the small print it wasn't as comprehensive as I wanted - too much wriggle-room & exclusions.

I need extreme sports cover for activities which the free credit card cover excluded making it pretty useless (i.e. I had to buy very expensive standalone extreme sports cover as well & worked out I could have got an annual travel insurance policy including these sports for the same).

So downgraded my credit card recently as just wasn't worth the annual charges for my needs. I don't bother with subscription Mastercards, Visa cards (or bank accounts) nowadays either .. just buy what I need when I need it instead. Only thing is remembering to do it especially when you fly off at a day's notice !! :).
 
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grego said:
not hired a car in ibiza for a while, but elsewhere this charge has always been fairly reasonable. i.e. 10-15€.
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It's usually that per day Grego and sometimes excludes loss of keys etc. anyway. Compares to about 6,50 Euros for 3 days on a standalone policy without those exclusions. That's actually quite a difference.

Just looked at my Hertz booking for next weekend - they want £19.14 per day for optional excess waiver 'Supercover' in Ibiza !!!! That's about 85 Euros for the 4-day hire... and surprise surprise the small print of that astronomic premium states

"Super Cover does not cover broken / loss of keys, contamination of fuel or Hertz NeverLost navigation units."

It will cost me about 8,50 Euros to insure the whole 4-day hire with worldwideinsure.com - 1/10 of the price, without the key exclusions. Never take a SatNav anyway and I know how to refuel a car so not worried about that !!
 
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It's a pretty impressive, if not great, business idea tbf. I've already suggested it to my guys here to get in to...
 
The tyre blew out whilst I was driving on the dual carriageway - and I had to pull off it sharpish at the next exit. So as you can imagine sparks were flying off the wheel by then and the tyre was actually shredded to bits/heat-mouled to the wheel 8O - quite a sight !!

The flying rubber from the shredding tyre cracked the front bumper, the plastic cover of a fog light popped out and disappeared somewhere along the way, and the indicator bulb cover on the side of the car popped out with the electric cables connecting to it ripped out also.

I hate new cars with low fender designs ... so 'precious' !! If that had been a pick-up I doubt there would have been anything like as much damage from one lousy tyre :lol:.
 
Thats quite a lot of damage and £700 is about right.
A blow out is usally due to a tyre wall fault and wire inside the tyre being compromised. If you had just picked it up from the airport it sounds like the car had not been properly checked before you got it.
 
zaax said:
Thats quite a lot of damage and £700 is about right.
A blow out is usally due to a tyre wall fault and wire inside the tyre being compromised. If you had just picked it up from the airport it sounds like the car had not been properly checked before you got it.
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Most likely. Hire cars out there are really put through the mill and often turned around very fast for re-hire. Unsurprisingly, all the real troubles I've ever had have been in August. The car was full of pre-exising scratches/damage too, all of which I had religiously noted on the contract - just that they were not in the area where the new damage arose :roll:.

Unfortunately, whether they checked the tyres properly or not the contractual liability for the blow-out and consequential damage rests with the person renting the car.. and as a regular "punter" there's no way I'd have been able to avoid it by doing anything when I picked it up, late at night in a car lot or otherwise !! A classic case of "hard cheese" ! Anyhow - the insurance paid out so no overall loss in the end.
 
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