Does car hire excess insurance cover the excess on 3rd party repairs?

Wrinkled

I am hoping that someone has experience of whether car hire excess insurance covers the excess in the event of a collision with another vehicle. I am trying to compare car hire excess policies but not able to easily confirm this. I have not had such a collision but this does not ever seem to be mentioned in discussion about these policies. MSE recommend taking out excess insurance rather than paying a lot more at the rental desk but does this leave you exposed to the excess if you damage another vehicle in an accident? I see that insurance4carhire excludes 'damage you cause to a 3rd party vehicle'. I remember being advised at a rental desk that their excess removal cover would remove all the excess, but I don't know if that was true as I did not read the wording. So, are you still exposed to the big damage excess if you hit a 3rd party vehicle, even if you take out independant excess insurance and would you be covered by this if you bought the cover on offer at the rental desk?

Veteransaver

There's never an excess on a third party's claim afaik. 

DullGreyGuy

Wrinkled said:

I am hoping that someone has experience of whether car hire excess insurance covers the excess in the event of a collision with another vehicle. I am trying to compare car hire excess policies but not able to easily confirm this. I have not had such a collision but this does not ever seem to be mentioned in discussion about these policies. MSE recommend taking out excess insurance rather than paying a lot more at the rental desk but does this leave you exposed to the excess if you damage another vehicle in an accident? I see that insurance4carhire excludes 'damage you cause to a 3rd party vehicle'. I remember being advised at a rental desk that their excess removal cover would remove all the excess, but I don't know if that was true as I did not read the wording. So, are you still exposed to the big damage excess if you hit a 3rd party vehicle, even if you take out independant excess insurance and would you be covered by this if you bought the cover on offer at the rental desk?

If you have caused large amounts of damage to the third party vehicle its an almost certainty you have also caused such damage to your hire car in which case the excess is applied to the own vehicle damage and the excess insurance will payout. 

Veteransaver said:

There's never an excess on a third party's claim afaik. 

Given we are talking about hire cars there is a reasonable prospect we are talking about vehicles outside the UK in which case there are potentially jurisdictions that do allow excesses on third party motor insurance. However it's a bit of a moot because the vehicle is insured by the hire company pretty much irrespective of anything else. What they charge you is not an insurance excess but simply a contractual fee as stipulated in the hire agreement. 

Plus you also get "loss sensitive insurance", which is in effect a ground up reinsurance agreement (so meets legal requirements in the likes of the UK) but then there is a side agreement that the hire company will reimburse the insurer up to $Xm of all claims in the policy year. One global hire car company has an effective excess of over $100m (on an aggregate basis).