Very pleased with icarhireinsurance.com (for third party car rental insurance excess)

Hi,

I wanted to share some happy experience with icarhireinsurance.com.

At the moment, it's cheaper for me to rent a car when I need one, instead of owning one. I rent a car for a weekend perhaps two or three times a quarter, and instead of paying for the car rental company's supplemental liability insurance to reduce the high insurance excess (at a cost of £10 /day), I found a number of companies that sell insurance that cover this excess themselves, and bought an annual Europe policy for £40 from icarhireinsurance.

Like with many insurances, I hoped that I would never need to use it, but have it just in case that I did. Unfortunately, a hire car that I had at the beginning of the month got keyed all the way down one side of the car. My total liability to the rental car company was £700, so I paid the full amount and waited for the damage report to arrive. It eventually arrived yesterday and I contacted icarhireinsurance to make a claim. Thankfully, the website had an online claim facility so the claim, whilst fairly long, was relatively painless to complete. I'm happy to report that I received a reply today saying that I will receive the full £700 back (less than 24 hours after submitting the claim).

All in all, I'm very pleased with the service from icarhireinsurance.com and would recommend it to anyone that rents cars on a reasonably regular basis.

tl;dr I bought a third party car hire excess insurance policy with icarhireinsurance.com for £40 and it is going to pay out my full liability of £700. Very pleased.


Jon

Comments

  • Sounds like good service

    This setup works well if you have the pennies available to pay the excess or repairs upfront.
  • cautiousjon
    cautiousjon Posts: 101 Forumite
    edited 29 April 2014 at 1:39PM
    I had no choice about paying the £700 and had to do it when I returned the car. All of this was written into the Enterprise car rental agreement T&Cs. Even without the icarhireinsurance policy, I would have still had to pay the £700 there and then. The only difference is that I wouldn't have been able to get that money back.

    When you're buying a policy from icarhireinsurance, you're basically insuring yourself in case your rental car gets into any sort of incident. I know many people who rent cars and take the chance by not buying supplemental insurance, but I prefer to be safe than sorry. £40 isn't a lot of money for piece of mind.
  • rs65
    rs65 Posts: 5,682
    First Anniversary Name Dropper First Post Combo Breaker
    Forumite
    I've had their cover for a couple of years without claiming so its good to hear that the claims service is good.

    ps Buy it through Quidco - think I got 30% cashback last time.
  • I made my first claim with iCarhireInsurance this summer after a shredded tyre and a bumper scratch in Portugal.
    They paid up with no quibble, excellent communications and customer services.
    If you damage your hire car, just make sure you keep your rental agreement, damage report and your credit card receipt.
    Your claim can be sent online and you get paid by bank transfer.
    I wouldn't hire a car again without using iCarhireInsurance.
  • I had no choice about paying the £700 and had to do it when I returned the car. All of this was written into the Enterprise car rental agreement T&Cs. Even without the icarhireinsurance policy, I would have still had to pay the £700 there and then. The only difference is that I wouldn't have been able to get that money back.

    When you're buying a policy from icarhireinsurance, you're basically insuring yourself in case your rental car gets into any sort of incident. I know many people who rent cars and take the chance by not buying supplemental insurance, but I prefer to be safe than sorry. £40 isn't a lot of money for piece of mind.


    No, if you had taken out Enterprises CDW rather than a third party one then you wouldnt have to pay anything up front. Needless to say Enterprises own one is more expensive than a third party one but does avoid the need to have a spare grand or so laying around for these types of issues.

    Not buying insurance doesnt mean you "self insure", to do that you need to explicitly put the money aside to use as a fund to pay "claims". What you are suggesting they are doing is simply being uninsured.
  • Quentin
    Quentin Posts: 40,405 Forumite
    No, if you had taken out Enterprises CDW rather than a third party one then you wouldnt have to pay anything up front. Needless to say Enterprises own one is more expensive than a third party one but does avoid the need to have a spare grand or so laying around for these types of issues.

    Not buying insurance doesnt mean you "self insure", to do that you need to explicitly put the money aside to use as a fund to pay "claims". What you are suggesting they are doing is simply being uninsured.


    As cautiousjon is a rare visitor here I wonder why you pick on his old post now?


    He didn't suggest not buying cover is self insurance, he reported that buying a £40 cdw annual policy was peace of mind for him compared with risking it by not taking any cdw!
  • Quentin wrote: »
    As cautiousjon is a rare visitor here I wonder why you pick on his old post now?

    as like many people I dont read the date of the original post when seeing a short thread at the top of the new posts, not noticing shakesmyteeth resurrected it
  • Quentin
    Quentin Posts: 40,405 Forumite
    as like many people I dont read the date of the original post when seeing a short thread at the top of the new posts, not noticing shakesmyteeth resurrected it

    You don't look to have read the post you argued with, never mind not reading the date!
  • Quentin wrote: »
    You don't look to have read the post you argued with, never mind not reading the date!

    I apologise for having not reached your level of perfection
  • Quentin
    Quentin Posts: 40,405 Forumite
    No need to apologise to me. I know what you are like.


    (But would be good if you did to cautiousjon who you unnecessarily argue with)
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