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.
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Car hire insurance and its “hidden” cost
Have you ever been struck by the “hidden” cost of car hire insurance? To be fair, it’s perhaps not so much a hidden cost as one that you discover only when you arrive at the car rental check-out desk. It happens when the agent advises you that the insurance excess on the basic rental agreement runs into several hundreds of pounds – but that you can cover such a liability by purchasing
This could leave you with a difficult choice:
- either you decline the rental company’s excess insurance and risk having to pay the full amount of the excess (depending on the company and whether you are hiring at home or abroad, the standard excess could range from anything from £500 to £1,600); or
- you fork out for the company’s excess insurance, which is likely to be calculated on a daily rate and could well add hundreds of pounds to your total car hire insurance.
However, there is a way to avoid either of these unwelcome, hidden costs. If you purchase excess insurance cover from an independent provider (many of whom sell such policies online), you can rest assured in the knowledge that any excess is fully covered for the duration of your rental period, you will not need to purchase the rental company’s excess insurance, and you could also find that you are paying considerably less for the cover.
Tackling your excess car hire insurance this way could also help to indemnify you against damage to those parts of the typically excluded from the rental company’s standard cover (windscreens, wheels, underside and roof of the vehicle, for example).
Hire car rental excess insurance
Depending upon the rental company, car rental excess may typically fall in the range of £500-£1600. In those circumstances, buying car rental excess insurance to avoid such charges being made to your credit card in the aftermath of an accident or incident with the hire car would be totally understandable.
The trouble with excess insurance supplied by the car hire company is, that it may tend to be expensive.
In some respects this is hardly surprising. The hire companies typically offer it for sale at the time you are picking up the rental keys.
At this stage in the game if you feel that you prefer to have excess insurance, then you have no real chance to shop around to see if you could source your cover more cost-effectively elsewhere.
This is not the same as saying that there are no real alternatives though. All it takes is that you think about your requirements for excess cover in advance of your rental.
There are online specialist providers of car hire insurance, where you may be able to find excess cover at prices more advantageous than those of the car hire companies. Their policies may well also cover those parts of the car, which are typically excluded by the standard CDW cover as supplied by the rental companies – and at no extra cost.
If you buy your rental excess insurance in this way, if there is a problem, the car hire company may still charge excess to your credit card but you would simply claim on your insurance policy for reimbursement.
Car excess insurance
Many forms of insurance carry an excess, which is the amount of money that your insurance company may expect you to pay if you had to claim on your policy. In the case of car excess insurance, this amount could be anywhere between £500 and £1600.
To give a simple example – you rent a car and the CDW cover carries an excess of £1000.
The car is then damaged and;
- if the repairs cost £300, then the car insurance company would expect you to pay £300;
- if the repairs amounted to £1200 then you would be expected to contribute £1000 and the car hire company would make up the £200 difference.
You may regard this as quite a sum to potentially have to fork out for the repair of someone else’s vehicle.
The good news is though, that you do not have to accept these high levels of excess. You can opt to buy some top up car rental cover known as car rental excess insurance, which can remove your responsibility for paying the excess.
Buying excess insurance from the car hire company is, of course, perfectly possible. In all likelihood they’ll offer to sell you some when you pick up the car keys.
If you’d like the chance to typically save a bit of money though, you may wish to consider buying car excess insurance from a car rental insurance specialist prior to your rental. You may find their prices to be just that little bit more competitive.
Car insurance liability rental
Thankfully when you rent a car you will normally be provided with an insurance policy by the rental company, typically automatically if you are in Europe, but often as an option if you are renting in North America. Car insurance and the liability in rental deals mean you are covered if you happen to injure someone in an accident, while you will normally also be protected in the event of damage or theft – but what about the excess?
It can often come as something of a surprise at the last moment when you sign a deal to find that the excess on a policy provided by the rental company is quite high – perhaps as much as several hundred pounds depending on the car and where you are renting.
This has obvious implications as even if something happens which damages the vehicle which was not your fault you can end up paying a considerable amount of money.
To give an example, if you rented a brand new Audi from a dealer which was targeted by thieves who break in and steal a sound system, you could be liable to pay the first £300 towards its replacement if there is an excess of £300 on the policy provided by the rental company.
This is not only extremely frustrating but also potentially very costly. You may find you even end up paying more than it has cost you to rent the car, which is why some people have turned to taking out excess insurance.
Car insurance with liability in a rental deal of course does give you some peace of mind in that you do not necessarily need to overly worry if you do have an accident or even if the car is stolen completely. However, having to pay the extra charge of an excess can seriously hurt your wallet. If something happens you are likely to have to sign a report before the rental car company simply takes off the excess amount from the credit card you provided them with at the start of the rental agreement.
With excess insurance you can simply claim for reimbursement on the policy you have taken out. Note that it’s true that a number of rental car companies will offer their own form of excess insurance at the counter, but you are perfectly entitled to refuse this when you get there, but accept the basic car insurance with liability in the rental deal, having sorted out your own excess protection before you arrived.