Hi Guys
I am going to New Zealand this year and was looking at renting a car from either Apex or Ace. I have been reading from various sources around the www that I should not purchase additional insurance and leave the access at the minimum cover as a normal travel insurance would be able to cover the excess.
The thing that is confusing me is places like world2cover covers car rental excess up to 4k for their Essentials provided I'm covered by comprehensive insurance. Is that the same as the minimum covers provided by the car rental companies?
I also have bankwest platinum which has some cover. Do I use this card for the car rental in addition to travel insurance? I understand there is the issue with cc insurance excess so I'm happy to take out the travel insurance on top of the cc.
Can someone help me out with this?
Thanks in advance.
Taking out travel insurance that covers the excess you need will cover you as long as you rent with a licenced car rental company (which Apex and Ace almost undoubtedly are) and meet all the conditions required to attract the cover (for CC travel insurance often involves a minimum spend on flights).
The comprehensive insurance as far as I'm aware is something the car rental company is required to provide - your travel insurance will simply cover the excess in the case of an accident.
Just be careful with the rental company you choose. I used a P2P rental company in France that pairs you up with local citizens to take their car. We had a small ding (barely noticeable thankfully) that wasn't covered by my CC travel insurnace because the P2P rental company was structured legally so that you contracted with the local individual rather than the company (who was just an intermediary not a licenced rental company). Thankfully the owner didn't care, as if it was a proper accident we would have been left with no protection - which we didn't find out until fine combing the P2P rental company's T&Cs.