Why Take Out Car Hire Excess Cover?
Where Do You Live?
Car hire insurance may come in very handy if you were to damage your hire car..
Car hire excess cover is an optional extra to the collision damage waiver protection typically supplied as standard by car hire companies.
If you don’t have excess car insurance, this would mean that if the car were damaged then you would be responsible for the repair costs up to the value of the excess.
To help put this in perspective, car hire company excess charges for damage repairs will typically go directly to your credit card – excess costs may be a great deal of money.
Exclusions
However there is more to taking out insurance than the charges for excess.
A typical collision damage waiver insurance protection will exclude certain car parts from cover. This means that if any of these parts need to be repaired or replaced due to damage sustained during your rental, then you are responsible for these repair costs and that could be in addition to any excess charges relating to other damage.
The parts concerned are usually:
l the windscreen and glass;
l the tyres;
l the under-body.
Worth the risk or not?
Gambling that you’ll have an incident free hire period and return the car in pristine condition may be one way of saving on those additional insurance premiums but it could turn out to be a very costly gamble if things go wrong.
Options
The provision of car hire cover is not restricted to the car rental companies.
If you look on the internet you may find you are able to make savings on your policy. They may usually offer a range of products for rentals in the UK, Europe and further afield.
Some of the added benefits of their car hire excess insurance cover include:
l cover for a number of named drivers at no extra cost;
l the option for an annual policy that can be used for a number of rentals;
l protection for the parts which were excluded in other policies.
Most importantly of all perhaps, is that you may find that their car hire excess insurance premiums may be most cost efficient than those of the car hire companies. Do note that your policy will be subject to policy limitations, exclusions within its terms and conditions.
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