Car Hire stand alone insurance policies

Andypandyboy

We were in Portugal recently and prior to going I had purchased an MSE reccomended car hire policy to avoid being ripped off by the rental agency.

When we arrived to collect the car we were put under real pressure form the comapny to take out their full insurance which cost over 200 euro. We told them we had our own policy but they insisted it was not good enough (without seeing it!) and that in Portugal you needed cover for vandalism. We did waiver and almost gave in, all around us people were doing just that, the reps were using real scaremongerng tactics to make people buy. We were happy for them to ringfence 1100 euros on our cc, but still they persisted.

In the end we stood firm, but for the whole of the holiday I was a bit uneasy. It seems to have turned out fine, no problems on our return (not had the cc statement yet so reserving full judgement till then!) but was I right to assume the Questor policy (annual) did give us the cover we needed?

As an aside, the car hire place had never heard of the DVLA scheme with the code and only wanted the old style driving license. They woud not release cars with just the code. So don't chuck your paper counterparts out.