Auto Insurance On Rental Cars

When renting a car, they always ask you if you want the auto insurance that comes with the rental. They stress that if you don’t take the auto insurance that they are offering, you could end up looking at costly out of pocket expenses if you should be in an accident of any kind. There is truth in that, in that if you don’t have the right auto insurance coverage you could be responsible for the money to fix it.

Sometimes you can get this auto insurance through your credit cards. Many of them offer rental auto insurance, which is automatic when you rent using their card. However, you have to read the fine print for some of these policies cover some stuff but not all of it. Sometimes they won’t pay if they can’t get the proper information from the rental car company, and they don’t always release that information to the card issuer.

Sometimes they will pay for the damages to the car, but they won’t pay for “loss of use” which means the amount of time that the rental car company cannot use the car because it is being repaired. This is kind of tricky because the rental car company has to prove that they had no other cars of the same type available at that same time, and that they can document the actual amount of time that the car could not be used.

Usually your auto insurance company kicks in first, and then whatever is not covered by that will go to your credit card company. Sometimes it is a case where the credit card’s auto insurance picks it all up like with Diners Card, but usually there are more than a few hoops to jump through before the issue is resolved. Some people find it easier to just pay the rental auto insurance because then they know that they are covered, but in many cases it can be a waste of money.




Back to October 2007 Archives