Insurance when renting a car

Dodgysailor

Hi all, i have rented a car online a few times here in the UK and sometimes overseas. Always with insurance. When you go to pick up the car they insist to insure the car with them for lots of reasons which makes me always a bit confused because I tend to think that the insurance I got when booking online should be enough. Any one knows what is the best way to do this?

DullGreyGuy

Dodgysailor said:

Hi all, i have rented a car online a few times here in the UK and sometimes overseas. Always with insurance. When you go to pick up the car they insist to insure the car with them for lots of reasons which makes me always a bit confused because I tend to think that the insurance I got when booking online should be enough. Any one knows what is the best way to do this?

Ignoring the US, the vehicle will come with the at least the minimum legal requirement to drive on the road... in the UK and the EU that is third party only up to several million per claimant. Most will come with own vehicle damage cover but:

1) It tends to have a very high excess

2) It excludes certain damages which are typically caused by you doing something silly rather than just being careless

3) Their breakdown cover often excludes things like running out of fuel, misfueling etc.

They will typically sell you at least one level of policy that reduces/eliminates the excess and may introduce cover for the undercarriage etc. Some sell multiple options like enhanced breakdown, plus full or partial excess cover etc. 

In the US there is the added complexities that the legal minimum can be as low as $3,000 for third party losses so they often have Supplementary Liability Insurance as another option and equally they may come with no insurance for own vehicle damage so again they may sell ground up insurance for damage to the hire car.


You can buy third party policies rather than buying it directly from the hire company and tend to be much cheaper. Note that this will mean you have to pay the £3,000 excess (or whatever it is) and then reclaim it from your insurers so must have the means to pay it on a single card. Some do experience some difficulties recovering the excess mainly because your insurers will want paperwork on the repairs being done and not all hire car companies are good at giving these over. 

Mark_d

I've rented cars online too, usually with Hertz.  As you say, the rental includes insurance.  Not sure why they ask you about insurance again when you collect the vehicle.  I don't recall this ever happening to me.