Taking Out Rental Car Insurance Coverage
Trying to describe the extent and limitations of rental car insurance coverage isn?t easy.
There are a number of likely variations depending upon the country and hire company concerned.
This article is about insurance in the UK and EU countries. You should note that in countries such as the USA the situation is generally different from the EU.
Packaged rental car insurance coverage
Generally your policy may include:
- third party liability protection ? to protect you against the financial consequences of someone claiming that you injured them or damaged their property with the rental car;
- CDW insurance which gives you peace of mind in the event of theft.
A few points to note even in the basics:
- you may have to pay for the parts of the car that are not covered in the policy if you do not have CDW cover;
- you are responsible for damage to the rental car even if you don?t happen to be driving it at the time ? for example if it suffers hit-and-run damage in a car park where you left it;
- in the rental agreement, you typically sign and authorise the rental company to charge any such costs directly to your credit card.
Limitations of rental car insurance coverage
Even with these two forms of cover in place, you may still not be fully protected:
you typically will remain liable for paying the excess on the policy ? an amount of money that may be as high as £1600;some areas of the rental car will typically be excluded from CDW insurance protection ? this often includes the wheels, tyres, under-body areas and the glass items of the car.
These put together may involve you facing a bill of perhaps some thousands of pounds after an accident even if you have the rental company?s inclusive basic insurance.
Further protection
Some rental companies will offer to remove the excess and cover all areas of the car for an extra payment.
You may wish to check out insurance online to save money
They generally offer car hire excess policies that will reimburse you if you receive an additional charge in these areas from the hire company.
Such policies may also offer things such as:
several additional named drivers;
annual policies to guard all cars you hire during the period.
As with any policy you may consider check out the terms and conditions to ensure you know what you are and are not protected against.