Excess reduction seems like a good way to save when you rent a car.

Lsarahjanes88 on 02/09/2014 - 13:19

I hate taking trains, buses, trams or whatever when I travel and always try to rent a car when I get the chance so I'm not locked down to where I have to visit. I always get full insurance at the car rental depot but this is usually over priced and not worth it for what is included. Someone at Europcar referred me to rentalcover.com, I just took the standard insurance with Europcar and then purchased the excess reduction product with Rentalcover.

I ended up paying $17 a day for full cover insurance and if I had an accident my excess would be $0. If I would have went with full cover with Europcar it would have cost $31 a day and still would of had to pay $350 if I had an accident. On a 15 day rental that's a couple hundred saving which I think is pretty good.

Moral of the story is don't get sucked into to paying for full insurance when you rent a car because there is cheaper options out there and they will try everything they can to get you to purchase their top of the line insurance.

Travel

Comments

  • AG_ACT on 02/09/2014 - 13:56
    +2

    Don't most credit cards provide this type of insurance for free?

    I thought the point of getting the excess reduction through the rental company was that rather than being reimbursed of the amount above the excess, you are just not charged it… no paper work etc.

    • Geewhizz on 05/09/2014 - 08:28

      Don't most credit cards provide this type of insurance for free?

      Not neccessarily for domestic hire. We got a platinum card last year specifically for this purpose, only to discover it didn't offer domestic cover. We ended up getting 12 months travel insurance through Aust Post for little more than $100. It didn't bring the excess down to zero but it wasn't much.

      With the cover provided through credit cards, there's usually also a limit on the number of days you can be travelling/ hiring.

  • cypher67 on 02/09/2014 - 15:45
    +2

    Rental cars … the fastest cars … in the weorld

  • rokoz on 03/09/2014 - 17:21

    Travel Insurance with rental cover is far better in most, if not all cases.

    3rd party excess cover would work no different than having a travel insurance policy with rental cover included. In both cases your credit card used for the rental would take the hit until later reimbursed by the insurer.

    $17 x 15 days = $255 - a domestic travel policy would be much cheaper than that, and have a lot of extra coverage.

  • Magnate on 06/09/2014 - 21:13

    Get a CC with domestic and international excess reduction insurance. Like the bankwest zero platinum (no annual fee).

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