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 Insurance 4 Car Hire.
Posts Tagged ‘Excess car hire insurance’
Why seek an excess car hire insurance quote?
A potentially good reason for getting an excess car hire insurance quote is because you could end up paying less for an improved level of cover than if you simply accepted the insurance package that generally comes with the rental of the vehicle.
In most parts of the world, a minimum level of insurance cover is a legal requirement when driving any vehicle, including a hire car. Most car hire companies, therefore, include the cost of that basic protection in the overall rental price.
Simply because the car hire company has included an element of insurance in the quoted price, however, this does not usually mean that you have to accept it. In most instances, you will be quite free to arrange your own insurance cover – provided it meets at least any minimum legal requirement.
Indeed, the cover that you arrange independently may in some cases surpass the level of cover included in the car hire package – especially with respect to the insurance protection against any “excess” for which you are liable in the event of a collision.
By seeking a car hire insurance quote, therefore, you are able to compare the cost of any cover offered by the car rental company with the cost of motor insurance arranged independently. You may well find that you are able to secure greater protection, against more risks, for less money, than that provided by the insurance in the all-inclusive hire car package.
You can also buy car hire excess insurance independently of other car hire insurance cover and this may typically pay the excess (up to pre-defined limits) in the event of you having an accident in the hired vehicle.
Your car hire insurance quote
Since the insurance cover included as part of the rental deal by car hire companies typically does not give complete protection, you may wish to consider getting a car hire insurance quote.
What’s missing
Typical collision damage waiver (CDW) cover has some fairly significant holes in it.
Not only is there the excess; which is the amount the car hire company will expect you to contribute to any claim and which may be somewhere in the region of £500-£1600, but CDW typically also excludes certain parts of the car from cover completely.
So if your hire car is damaged, you could be facing a fairly significant charge to your credit card.
Top-up
You may feel that getting some top-up insurance to cover this kind of exposure may be a good idea.
Your car hire company will certainly offer to sell you some, which may do the job but which may well cost you more than if you shopped around a little.
Planning ahead
Getting a car hire insurance quote for your hire car in advance, may give you the opportunity to have a look round at what car rental insurance specialists have on offer. You may find that they can offer competitively priced cover that may be both suitable and more cost effective then the no-choice option of the car hire company.
Excess car hire insurance guide
Excess car hire insurance sounds rather complicated but in fact is relatively straightforward.
The origin of the ‘excess’
The ‘excess’ is a common insurance technique used by insurance companies to help keep the cost of the insurance (the premium) a little lower to you the client.
It means essentially that if you take the car rental company’s ‘basic’ insurance, you also agree to pay the ‘first-part’ of any subsequent claim to the limit specified by the excess.
That’s a bit of a mouthful and it’s perhaps more easily explained with an example.
The excess on your car hire insurance policy is set at say 750 pounds (and it is typically between 500 and 1500 pounds). You subsequently have an accident resulting in a claim for 2000 pounds. The rental company will debit your credit card for 750 pounds as ‘the excess and first part’ of the claim. They will then recover the remaining balance of 1250 pounds from their insurance company.
Had the claim totalled say 500 pounds, you would have had to pay it all even though you had insurance in place.
The excess is frequently controversial and is disliked by many car hire clients, particularly as you may have no control over who assesses any damage involved in an accident or who repairs it and at what cost.
Options to avoid the risks of excess
The car rental companies will reduce the excess or remove it entirely – for an extra cost. This they may refer to as ‘top-up’ insurance, ‘excess car hire insurance’ or in some cases perhaps ‘super CDW cover’.
You may though wish to consider another and usually far cheaper option to deal with the risks of excess, but to explain this we’ll need to think a little about car hire insurance.
The nature of car rental insurance
Your car rental company may have rented the car to you and included some components of insurance in the deal. If they didn’t, they will probably try to sell it to you separately. Whatever the situation in your case, their basic cover will usually include hefty excess.
You are though under no obligation to take the insurance they included in the deal or offered you for sale (with some exceptions such as some fly-drive holidays and perhaps some special offers). Even if it is already included, you can ask for a rental-only price and then purchase and use your own versions of car rental insurance.
On the Internet you will find a very active and competitive Insurance market including the specialist providers of various forms of car rental insurance. Their prices are almost invariably far cheaper than those of the rental companies and they may well carry no excess at all. If they have no excess then clearly you don’t need to purchase additional excess car hire insurance – because you have no such risk!
The specialist providers and excess insurance
For whatever reason, you may have decided to accept the rental company’s insurance but remain worried about their excess. The good news is that you don’t have to pay yet more money to them for excess insurance.
The specialist providers can also sell excess insurance that means they will reimburse you should you be charged excess by your rental company. Their excess car hire insurance may often work out more attractive than that of the rental company and it can often even be sold as an annual policy to cover you for any vehicles rented in the period (subject to some exclusions for very specialised vehicle types). It might be worth looking at in more detail.
Excess car hire insurance guide
Excess car hire insurance sounds rather complicated but in fact is relatively straightforward.
The origin of the ‘excess’
The ‘excess’ is a common insurance technique used by insurance companies to help keep the cost of the insurance (the premium) a little lower to you the client.
It means essentially that if you take the car rental company’s ‘basic’ insurance, you also agree to pay the ‘first-part’ of any subsequent claim to the limit specified by the excess.
That’s a bit of a mouthful and it’s perhaps more easily explained with an example.
The excess on your car hire insurance policy is set at say 750 pounds (and it is typically between 500 and 1500 pounds). You subsequently have an accident resulting in a claim for 2000 pounds. The rental company will debit your credit card for 750 pounds as ‘the excess and first part’ of the claim. They will then recover the remaining balance of 1250 pounds from their insurance company.
Had the claim totalled say 500 pounds, you would have had to pay it all even though you had insurance in place.
The excess is frequently controversial and is disliked by many car hire clients, particularly as you may have no control over who assesses any damage involved in an accident or who repairs it and at what cost.
Options to avoid the risks of excess
The car rental companies will reduce the excess or remove it entirely – for an extra cost. This they may refer to as ‘top-up’ insurance, ‘excess car hire insurance’ or in some cases perhaps ‘super CDW cover’.
You may though wish to consider another and usually farmore attractively-priced option to deal with the risks of excess, but to explain this we’ll need to think a little about car hire insurance.
The nature of car rental insurance
Your car rental company may have rented the car to you and included some components of insurance in the deal. If they didn’t, they may probably try to sell it to you separately. Whatever the situation in your case, their basic cover will usually include hefty excess.
You are though under no obligation to take the insurance they included in the deal or offered you for sale (with some exceptions such as some fly-drive holidays and perhaps some special offers). Even if it is already included, you can ask for a rental-only price and then purchase and use your own versions of car rental insurance.
On the Internet you may sometimes find a very active and competitive insurance market including the specialist providers of various forms of car rental insurance. Their prices are almost invariably far more attractive than those of the rental companies and they may well carry no excess at all. If they have no excess then clearly you don’t need to purchase additional excess car hire insurance – because you have no such risk!
The specialist providers and excess insurance
For whatever reason, you may have decided to accept the rental company’s insurance but remain worried about their excess. The good news is that you don’t have to pay yet more money to them for excess insurance.
The specialist providers can also sell excess insurance that means they will reimburse you should you be charged excess by your rental company. Their excess car hire insurance often will be more attractively-priced than that of the rental company and it can often even be sold as an annual policy to cover you for any vehicles rented in the period (subject to some exclusions for very specialised vehicle types). It might be worth looking at in more detail.