advice on car hire in USA and Canada

trets77

following on from my thread about my holiday to Toronto i,m now faced with a quandrie about my car hire. with Alamo

i want to take out a insurance policy with http://www.insurance4carhire.com because.
1. with my planned trip to new england next year this policy will cover both holidays.saving money
2. it is far better insurance policy that cover excess waivers and tyres ect.
3.i begrudge paying inflated prices to these companys.

however Alamo do not regonize these policys as quoted by FAQ from above site

Fly Drive programmes are generally structured so that the car rental company makes its money from add-ons such as insurance. For that reason, companies which participate in fly-drive programmes do not always readily accept this insurance. For example, both Dollar and Alamo will accept our insurance but will withdraw or block US$ 1,500 from your credit card for the duration of the rental when you do a fly-drive through them, using our insurance.

If there is damage to the vehicle, they are unlikely to charge your credit card unless the amount is small. It is more likely that the car rental company will take direct contact with our claims management company. However, the renter must submit a claim form so that the claims management company is fully appraised of the circumstances in which the damage was sustained.

use of language like "unlikely to charge" and "more likely" does not reassure me that worst comes to worst that i would not be liable for the entire cost of a write off say.

quotes like this from a thread in this section make me think twice

have checked out insurance4carhire.com. Although it seems like a good deal, I phoned Dollar rent-a-car in Sanford and asked what would happen if I were to take out a seperate LDW/CDW policy. The woman said we would have to put down $1500 deposit and if the car was damaged at all, the bills would have to be paid by us.

Then we would have to claim from insurance4hire. At the worse case scenerio this could leave us with $30,000 (write off) to pay upfront! I wouldn't fancy that!

could they really do this or could i tell them deal with my insurance company.

i,m thinking twice about the policy now as it is only 3 days hire for Toronto but i very very much resent this take our crappy expensive insurance or else attitude
my plan was to give them my credit card and then close down the account with credit card company when i,m out the door and then heaven forbid i should be billed Alamo can chase me for the money rather than the other way around. i have a deep mistrust of car hire companys after reading this http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,18409-2166250_1,00.html



any adivice greatly appericated money savers