Car Hire Excess Insurance - Car Rental Excess Insurance
Protect yourself against paying the excess if you have a scrape in your hire car abroad with car rental excess insurance. Car rental insurance covers your rental car excess payment - which could cost up hundreds of pounds - when you take out a hire car.Selecting the "get a quote" button will direct you to ProtectYourBubble.
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What is classic bike insurance?
If you have a classic machine, you might be wondering how to best protect it through insurance.
There’s no universal answer to that question but a good start point might be to think about classic bike insurance.
Why?
Insurers are keen to try and write policies that meet the specific requirements of different categories of biker. That allows them to construct propositions that will not only appeal to the policyholder but also potentially save them money on the premium.
In the case of classic bikes, some insurers have looked at the way a classic bike is used and examined how aspects of that might enable a policy to offer an increasingly cost-attractive solution.
Although different insurers may have reached different answers, it’s possible to highlight a number of ways in which a classic bike might differ from a standard machine – other than in age or value etc.
For example:
- you might ride a classic machine far less than an ordinary bike. That means lower average mileages;
- owners of classic machines might ride them more conservatively and therefore safely, than might be the case with some ordinary bikes;
- many classic bikes are maintained to a very high level by their devoted owners.
- typically, they will be highly valued and kept very secure.
Of course, none of the above things is guaranteed to be the case but statistically they may be and that might encourage insurers to consider special policies that recognise the above positions.
Some classic bike policies may, in fact, make adherence to some of the above practices to be a mandatory component of their cover. For example, they may insist upon your bike being securely locked away and immobilised in a garage when not in use. They may also have a maximum permissible annual mileage that might be lower than those available for standard bikes.
However, these things might be a small price to pay if the result is a significantly reduced premium.
Not all insurance providers offer this type of protection and those that do may adopt differing individual positions on components of cover.
What that means is that it’s worth shopping around for these policies and between the individual providers of such cover.
It’s true that this may consume a little extra of your time but that might result in a useful payback on investment if you find more attractively-priced cover and a policy that offers you protection that is commensurate with the nature of your classic bike and how you use it.
Why buy car rental insurance online?
With many car hire companies now operating over the internet, hiring a car has never been easier and you’ll typically find that the deal may include just about everything you need to just get into the car and drive off.
The one thing that may be missing from your package deal might be the complete peace of mind that would come from knowing that if your hire car was damaged while it was on rental to you, you would not be responsible for any element of the repair or replacement costs.
That’s because of the way that rental companies deal with car rental insurance online.
Third Party cover – injury or damage to others
For UK rentals, for example, you’ll typically find that rental companies are obliged by law to provide unlimited third party cover. This means that no matter what levels of damage are caused by the hire car to third parties, this insurance will cover it – it will pay out an unlimited amount.
In other countries though this may not be the case however and you may wish to purchase additional Supplemental Liability Insurance (SLI) to ensure that you have appropriate levels of cover.
Damage to the rental car
When it comes to damage to the rental car itself, you may find that some degree of cover is provided as standard and the costs of this cover may be rolled into the overall price of your rental.
The type of cover provided by rental companies is not the standard fully comp cover that you may be familiar with for private car cover. Hire cars typically come with a Collision Damage Waiver (CDW) by which the hire company in effect agrees to waive their right to charge you for repairs to the car or in the worst case, for its complete replacement.
These policies may typically also include the theft of the vehicle.
What’s missing
An important point to note about CDW is that it typically will contain two features which could result in you receiving some potentially hefty charges to your credit card if the car is damaged while in your care.
A typical CDW policy may have:
- an excess which could be anywhere in the range of £600-1500;
- several exclusions which mean that damage to the tyres, windscreen, and undercarriage of the car are not covered at all.
To isolate yourself from these potential costs you may wish to consider additional top up or excess insurance and in fact the hire company may try to sell you some at the point when you are picking up the keys.
If you want to avoid being pressurised into buying what could potentially be very cost-ineffective top up cover, you may wish to check out the web sites of some of the specialist car hire insurance providers who may be able to offer these top up policies at far more attractive prices.