Car Hire Excess Insurance May Save You A Great Deal Of Money

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 at 10:11 pm

When you buy car hire insurance for a rental in the UK or most parts of Europe, the cover is unlikely to automatically include car hire excess protection.

In the scheme of things

While policies may vary you might find that insurance covers the following:

l third party insuranceproviding financial protection if your negligence causes injury to another person or damages their property - in the UK by law this provides unlimited insurance protection;

l protection against the car being stolen or for damage to the car;

l the CDW typically carries an excess and may also exclude certain parts of the car from cover.

Excess

The excess in any form of insurance represents an amount that you could be expected to contribute to any claim.

What this means for you is that if you choose not to buy any optional extra excess coverfor your car hire, you may be personally responsible for excess charges if you were unfortunate enough to damage the car.

Since some car hire companies can charge up to Â£1600 for excess, you may end up facing quite a bill.

Obviously, some people would prefer not to have to pay an amount so high for excess so they opt for car hire excess protection to top-up their protection.

Where to buy

There are typically a couple of options with regards to where to buy car hire excess insurance.

The first is that you buy it from the car hire company themselves.

You may take out insurance from the rental company.

That might usually not be the best time to make sure that you fully understand the terms and conditions of the policy being offered. Therefore you might have insurance that you do not fully understand.

For example, does it cover those parts of the car that CDW generally doesn't cover?

Finally you may choose to take out insurance in advance of renting the car and this may mean you have benefits such as:

l giving you the time and the opportunity to fully understand the levels of insurance protection being provided;

l providing cover for a number of named drivers;

l car parts that would be excluded in some protection included at no extra cost;

l savings against similar cover provided by the car hire companies;

l the convenience of an annual policies for frequent renters.

Peace of mind

Do note that your insurance protection will be subject to policy limitations, exclusions within the terms and conditions.

Car hire excess insurance may help provide the peace of mind that comes from knowing that you have done as much as you can to protect your credit card from excess charges.

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