Cards with Primary Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver.

[FicoMike0]

Id like to start a list of cards that offer Primary Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver. Preferably with no annual fee, but those seem hard to find. I just found one,

https://www.ussfcu.org/personal/visa-credit-cards/smart-rewards.html

All the others I've found are fee cards.

[KatzNDawgs]

USAA covers it on any of their cards up to 31 days of rental:

https://www.usaa.com/banking/credit-card-benefits-guide

I do have personal experience with this, was renting a car and going from Florida to NC with rental on USAA card, no additional rental insurance purchased. Got rear ended. Threw the bumper in the trunk, told the rental place it was in there when I returned it, and no additional fees charged from them.

NFCU also does on all cards, but need a minimum rental length of 15 days.

Most of the credit cards from the two above have no AF aside from their travel cards.

[gregorius]

Neither of those are primary (unless you don't have other auto insurance).

USAA (per your link): "Save money by saying no at the counter – reserve and pay for your rental car with your covered USAA credit card and get built-in auto rental coverage worldwide on rental periods up to 31 days. In your country of residence, this coverage is secondary [emphasis mine] to any other insurance or coverage available to you."

NFCU (link): "With your Navy Federal Visa® Card, you automatically have Collision Damage Waiver (CDW) coverage when you rent a car for 15 days or less and pay for the rental with your covered rewards card. The CDW coverage is secondary [emphasis mine] to any other applicable insurance or coverage available to you."

[SpaethCo]

The Bilt Mastercard (issued by WellsFargo) includes primary CDW.

[MarkintheHV]

AmEx has it if you sign up for it.  There are two levels and you dont pay anything until you rent, then its  small add on to your rental bill when it posts to AmEx.  I have the $70k in property damage and I think its around $18.75 per rental.  There is a 100k level, but I am not sure how much that one costs.

You can pretty much add this to any card they have.

[unsungivy]

It's pretty well known that both the CSP and CSR have primary. I'll add that the Ritz card has primary as well. All 3 cards have an AF.

[smcj]

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@MarkintheHV wrote:

AmEx has it if you sign up for it.  There are two levels and you dont pay anything until you rent, then its  small add on to your rental bill when it posts to AmEx.  I have the $70k in property damage and I think its around $18.75 per rental.  There is a 100k level, but I am not sure how much that one costs.

You can pretty much add this to any card they have.

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The second level is $24.95 per rental.

Here's an AMEX link discussing the whole shebang:  https://feeservices.americanexpress.com/premium/car-rental-insurance-coverage/home.do

For those in the TL;DR space in re going through the link, key stuff from the link:

"Primary for damage to or theft of the rental vehicle.11 If your rental vehicle is damaged, you can file that claim with us first as your primary provider."

That footnote 11 says further:

"11. This product does not include coverage for Liability, Uninsured or Underinsured Motorist, or Disability."

To have coverage, you MUST:

1. Manually elect this coverage on your AMEX (you do it once, and then AMEX is smart about seeing "oh this is a rental car charge" and dings you for the premium any time a rental car charge is finalized onto that AMEX card).
   
   
2. Use the AMEX BOTH at pickup time (meaning:  your AMEX is what they put that "just in case" authorization on and the rental car company is going to bill rental to at the end unless you tell them otherwise) AND when you turn the car in (meaning you don't change payment to another card at return-time).   

I have used this product before.  A delivery truck took the side mirror off the rental car while it was parked.  AMEX wasn't exactly talkative, and I had to go ask them what was up once because the rental company got a little ansy from the quiet, but AMEX did in fact take care of it and didn't make me jump through hoops otherwise.  Heck, AMEX was so quiet I had to reach out to them to find out that the whole thing had been resolved.  There was zero interaction with my "regular" auto insurance.  None.  Good stuff.

Hope this is useful.

[FicoMike0]

All good info! I'll have to put the bilt and usscu Visa on my long range consideration list. I do like the 42 day coverage with amex.

[smcj]

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@FicoMike0 wrote:

All good info! I'll have to put the bilt and usscu Visa on my long range consideration list. I do like the 42 day coverage with amex.

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Re the AMEX, given that duration and it being a ton cheaper than... even getting one ding to one's own insurance, it's kind of a killer deal.  Heck, a fancy pizza costs more!