All About Car Rental Insurance

 Know About The Car Rental Insurance

If you are a proud owner of a car, you will definitely know the importance and the usefulness of car insurance. Some people get full accidental coverage for their cars and some get some car parts insured. In either case, you get the benefit of replacing, repairing and taking care of your car. Although the car insurances cover major damages, there are always some rules and restrictions applicable to those car insurances. You need to be careful about insurance for a rented car when you opt for rental companies.

Is my rented car insured?

This is the question that you need to ask when you are about to sign the car renting contracts with the company. You should ask this question right after you choose the car and inform the car rental company about the time period for which you want to hire this car. There could some exceptions to this. Say, for example, you require the car to pick you up and drop at a location for that day only. Then you may do away with the car rental insurance. The reason is that most of the times, the car will lie in the parking space or the garage space. So any dent or damage happening to the car would be a rare occasion.

However, say you require the car for more than a day and need to go to several locations for your work purpose. Then you should better get the accidental insurance to be prepared for any emergency. Sometimes the car insurances that you purchase for your own car are also applicable or could be extended for the private cars that you will rent in the future. Whether or not that is true is depending on the insurance package you personally buy for your own car. In case, you don’t have these insurance facilities, then you should definitely purchase insurance from the car rental company.

The inclusive and the exclusives of the insurance

When you are told about the insurance prices by the car rental company, your first question should be what are included and what are excluded in the insurance package? You should read the insurance document very carefully before signing. It could so happen that the document has mentioned in very small fonts that the insurance coverage will exclude dents happening on the car of any kind. If you for example, miss those fonts and think that all dents are covered by the insurance package, then you will be forced to pay for the dents on your own. In most of the insurance documents, such things are mentioned either in very small fonts at the bottom of the document with an “*” mark or they could also be mentioned as a sub clause to some article at one of the pages of the document.  Collision damage waiver is a kind of insurance that is mostly common in the foreign countries. By this insurance, there are special kinds of dents and damages that gets coverage.

However, as earlier mentioned, there will be some loopholes in this insurance too. So you need to read the offer documents very carefully, even the areas marked by “*” and given in small fonts. For the rental cars, this CDW will be charged per day.

Extensibility of your current car insurance

As mentioned earlier, the car insurance that you are currently paying for could sometimes cover the damages caused to a rented card. All these are subjected to a valid time period, to certain types of damages, and to certain types on insurances. This will not be known by the car rental company. So, if you without knowing the benefits of your current car insurance package buy another short term insurance package for your rented car, then that will entirely be your mistake. However, if you communicate to the car rental company, that you possess the required car insurance with you, then you will also have to provide necessary documents to support your claim.

Coverage provided by credit cards

If you own a car and you have credit cards, then you should enquire your credit card company, as the credit cards may have some provisions for insurance on rental cars. Normally this damage covers any physical dent or theft of the car. Therefore, if you are about to hire a car and already own a credit card, have a talk with the representatives of the credit card company. In case, you end with up a minor accident while driving the car, you will have to prove to the car rental company, that your credit card covers for the insurance. Don’t miss any single document or else you might end up paying up the compensation yourself. Sometimes your own car insurance (that could be extended to rental cars) or the insurance coverage provided by your credit cards costs much lesser than the one provided to you by the rental company.  

To conclude, accidental insurance is definitely required to avoid the hassles of dents and damages of the cars. However, if you are renting the car for a very short amount of time, then taking up a very costly car insurance may not be a good decision for you. As mentioned during that time, if the car is kept in the parking space for most of the time, then your car will possibly not be harmed that much. The dents and damages are most likely to happen if you need to the car to constantly move to and fro from one place to another and that too in an unknown city or district or state, then the chances of getting dents on the car increases. Therefore, there should definitely be a car insurance for using the cars for a longer amount of time. Although before accepting the insurance package from the rental company, you must read the offer documents very carefully as you might end up paying both the insurance and the damages for the dents due to a minor overlook in the agreement.