Advice on insurance for hire car

scarlets_knees

I have hired a car for a family holiday in Italy in mid-september. I am keen to be fully covered against theft/accident as I've never driven abroad. I know I can buy all the extra CDW/TP packages on arrival but this will come to something like £110-150 based on the figures given on Avis' website. That's nearly as much as I'm paying for the car so I'm keen to cut the costs if possible. I've seen articles in the press about taking out insurance to cover you against the excesses. I've found a comapny - https://www.insurance4carhire.com - that has had good reviews from travel writers that will cover me for £49.99 for a whole year of car hire, and wondered if anyone here had any views or experiences of this type of thing (some of the hire car brokers offer it on their hires), if it was easy to claim back etc and names of other companies who do this.

Also a query - if I did want to take out these extra policies why can't I pay for the extras in advance online when I book the car, why do I have to pay them on arrival? Just curious.

Thanks in advance.

MarkyMarkD

With many hire companies you can pre-pay for the extra insurances, which sometimes works out more cheaply.

I can't recommend against insurance4carhire or their like, but personally think that spending £50 to cover a 2 week car hire (if that's all you will actually do in a year) is a huge amount as it's an annualised cost of £2,600. And all you are insuring in a lot of cases is the insurance excess of maybe £500 as basic insurance is normally included in the original car hire price. But that's just my opinion - others would say that the risk of an incident in a strange car, in a foreign country, on the wrong side of the road is far higher than in the UK, and therefore that insurance at £50 would be cheap at twice the price.

Cardew

I have had the insurance4carhire policy for the USA - which costs£99 - for a couple of years. The 'break even'(compared to fully inclusive cover) point for me is 3 weeks hire in the USA a year. Don't know how good the service is if you have a claim - and I hope I never need to find out.

NatWest give you exactly the same cover(from the same firm) for £75 if you have their credit card and pay with their card.

I believe there is some sort of deal to be had if you have an American Express Card - but I believe it is expensive.

One thing is certain - if you have to pay anything in Italy to the rental desk you will be ripped off.

scarlets_knees

MarkyMarkD - actually it's only a week so it's even worse value!! That has made me think about taking anything out. £50 is still better than £100-150 and it covers me for a whole year. I tend to hire cars at least 3 times a year so it's better but still a total rip off. When you hire a car it should come with a lower (or nil) excess built into the hire charge.

Maybe a new battle for Martin to take on?

MarkyMarkD

I don't agree with you about nil excess, although obviously I'll hire a car with no excess if it's available at the best price (like https://www.carjet.com for Spain, for example). I'd rather have the choice about whether to pay over the odds to insure my excess rather than having it built in at the same excessive rate.

On the same basis, you should argue that all car insurance should come with no excess - and again, I'd rather have the choice than be dictated to by the car insurer.