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Car hire USA including extra insurance charges

I am very confused. I have booked a car in California for 3 days.

£117 on Booking.com

then £30 for extra driver (The Boss or Wife as she is known)

then £30 excess cover insurance, as advised by MSE

However, I know I need Supplementary Liability Insurance, but its a black hole.

The car hire firm is AVIS and on their website SLI is £50 a day.

the £150 is more than the car hire charge.

There appears to be nothing in MSE car hire pages on this.

Any help greatly appreciated

Comments

  • jimjames
    jimjames Posts: 19,474
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    Forumite
    edited 9 March at 9:29AM

    I would buy any excess cover separately from the hire company. I've used Reduce My Excess which was much lower than the hire company, around £30 total I seem to recall. There are MSE pages with plenty of content on excess cover

    https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-car-hire/#excess

    Remember the saying: if it looks too good to be true it almost certainly is.
  • MyRealNameToo
    MyRealNameToo Posts: 5,351
    1,000 Posts First Anniversary Name Dropper
    Forumite

    Some excess cover insurances also offer SLI if you are hiring in North America

    If you got excited and bought your excess cover already without looking at SLI you can still buy standalone SLI but the two separate policies are likely to be more expensive than a combined policy would have been but probably too late to worry about that now and will still be much cheaper than the £50/day

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