Car hire Excess 2023

HeatherKM

after your 18th July Tips email, when we went to hire a car during our holiday in Crete recently, we booked excess cover with Eversure, following the link from the email, the night before we went to book the car.  IN the morning, the car hire company said they would not accept this cover and theirs was all included (includues excess cover).  Not wanting to pay for this twice, before we hired the car we cancelled our policy with Eversure via their web site only to be informed that there would be no refund as the Policy had started.  

We literally had the cover for a few hours, should there not have been a 'cooling off' period?

Brie

If there is any cooling off period I suspect it would be between the time you bought the policy and when it was needed.

Otherwise if you bought a policy for (for instance) 7 days and there was a 14 day cooling off period then you could cancel it after the holiday had finished assuming you hadn't needed the cover at all.

DullGreyGuy

HeatherKM said:

after your 18th July Tips email, when we went to hire a car during our holiday in Crete recently, we booked excess cover with Eversure, following the link from the email, the night before we went to book the car.  IN the morning, the car hire company said they would not accept this cover and theirs was all included (includues excess cover).  Not wanting to pay for this twice, before we hired the car we cancelled our policy with Eversure via their web site only to be informed that there would be no refund as the Policy had started.  

We literally had the cover for a few hours, should there not have been a 'cooling off' period?

ICOBS 7.1 that creates the cooling off period excludes policies of 30 days or less duration under 7.1.3(1). Any cooling off period is therefore down to them and isnt a statutory requirement. According to their site, short term policies become non-refundable as soon as they incept (can be cancelled for a £5 admin fee before they incept)

HeatherKM

Thanks.

I presume by 'incept'  you mean as soon as you have paid?  

tightauldgit

HeatherKM said:

Thanks.

I presume by 'incept'  you mean as soon as you have paid?  

As soon as the cover starts. 

HeatherKM

tightauldgit said:

HeatherKM said:

Thanks.

I presume by 'incept'  you mean as soon as you have paid?  

As soon as the cover starts. 

Thank you all for your help

zagfles

Excess insurance covers you, not the car hire company, so they don't need to "accept" it. It's nothing to do with them, you don't even need to tell them you have it.

Obviously if there's no excess on the car hire you don't really need it, but IME nearly all car hires with supposedly "no excess" have exclusions for half the car eg tyres, glass, underside, roof etc.