@Anonymous wrote:
Actually, can someone elaborate on the whole car renting thing? It's been years since I've had cards and even longer that I actually rented a car.
I have the CSP and a Venture; I think as Visa Sig cards they cover the primary insurance...or something like that? I have no idea what any of that means because I don't have auto insurance at all. (I don't own a car. I have motorcycle insurance but I know that's not applicable to anything but my bikes.)
So if you were in my situation and walked into a car rental joint and wanted to rent a car, which card would you use, what coverage do you get, what coverage do you refuse from the rental agency? Collision, loss, liaibility, etc. Assume that I am okay with paying more upfront for piece of mind, whether it's a ding to the windscreen or something worse.
Thanks.
Hi.
I am a non-owner. That is, I don't own a car. I mostly ride a bike, use transit, and rent cars on weekends and for road trips. I also use Car2Go (point-to-point rental) and ZipCar (short duration rental).
I got a non-owner's insurance from Progressive. That protects me against liability. You can check for those policies with other providers such as Geico as well. In most cases, they'll only cover liability and against uninsured motorists but not against collision damage to the car you were driving. It's also helpful if you're using a friend's car and their insurance doesn't cover beyond immediate family.
If you're not driving frequently, you could just pick up the supplemental liability protection offered by the rental company. For casual renters not renting more than 1-2 days in a month, that's often going to be cheaper than going for a full-fledged policy.
I use one of the following, depending on the quarter: Discover, CSP (auto on Car2Go and ZipCar), and US Bank Cash+. I always decline any rental company waiver.
With Car2Go and ZipCar, the situation sounds tricky because Visa doesn't recognize them as "rentals" - there's a case going on about ZipCar. Anyway, unless you purchase ZipCar's monthly / annual waiver, you're going to pay up to $1000 deductible in the case of a damage to the vehicle. With Car2Go, they're going to add a $1 fee to every ride and bring that deductible down to $250 per accident. They offer free liability insurance, however.
Discover (and I believe Mastercard) is secondary insurance. So if you have own insurance, you are supposed to file with them first. The downside is that your rates may go up if you're at fault. Discover and Mastercard then pays any amount that your own insurance is not paying.
CSP Visa Signature is primary; so you can file the damage waiver directly to them. You don't need to call them everytime you rent. Bother them only when you get involved in an incident; however, remember not to charge / split your bill across multiple cards. The one rule that you need to adhere is to charge all of the bill (after any discount) to one card only.
Discover, Mastercard, and Visa won't extend this service for high-end cars (mostly $50k and above) and beyond a set number of continuous days per rental (typically 2 weeks to a month). AMEX has a special policy that charges $19.99 per rental (not per day) that has more relaxed rules; however AMEX requires (at least when I last checked) the cardholder to be US permanent resident to be able to make use of that policy. The other 3 are free of cost and have no such restriction unless the issuing bank has any restriction.
In case you get into an accident, do the usual, i.e. file a police report, get a copy of the report, take some pictures of the damaged vehicle with your phone, and if it's not your fault, get as much detail about the other guy as possible. If it's a hit and run (as it happened with me), see if you can get any witness who'd like to help with the description of the offender.
Call up your cardmember services and they'll patch you up with an insurance company they're working with. That agent will then take all this detail from you and as a proof of using the card, they'll ask for (a) the rental agreement which has your car number and credit card number and (b) the credit card statement that has your card account number and this particular rental. Typical privacy aspects are applicable; you'll be advised of them when you actually file the claim. They'll also give you a claim #.
Once you've got the police report # and the claim #, give it to the rental agency so that their claims department could begin processing. Stay out of the process as much as possible (from personal experience). If another guy's at fault, their insurance will pick up almost all of the tab including loss of use and administrative fees. If you're responsible, be ready to pay from your own pocket (pessimistic version) 1-2 days of rental bill e.g. if your car rents for $20/day, they might add $40 as loss of use / fees and the credit card insurance may, at times, decide not to pay for it because the rental company did not fully cooperate with utilization logs. Has not happened to me but I've heard many such stories on the net.
Hope it helps.
Edited to add: Not all visa signature offer primary insurance. CSP offers primary, many others offer secondary. If you don't have coverage from your auto insurer then these insurance policies become primary.
