Need to rent a car and am wondering which card to use for CDW coverage. Just got a citi premier so would like to use it if the insurance is good. Typically I use my amex plat card, but since I am not renting with my usual rental agency I don't really want to use it unless necessary. I also have cap 1 venture card. My only chase premium card other than the hyatt card is a business ink. Everything else is freedoms or non-AF inks. Other amex premium cards I have are personal gold card and aspire card although not really looking to use those since they don't earn as well and I am not trying to achieve a SUB with them, but my main concern is that I don't have a difficult time with insurance if something goes bad with rental.
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@Loquat wrote:
FYI the Citi Premier doesn’t offer Primary coverage.
I don't care about primary coverage. I don't have insurance so purchase a personal injury policy from rental company per rental. In the end all CDWs are primary for me.
@Loquat wrote:
That’s my point. The Citi Premier doesn’t offer any car rental coverage. All of that was removed September 2019. Even if you had a card that offered secondary insurance that would mean you’d need to have some sort of coverage own your own and the cards benefit would kick in “secondary”.
Since you mentioned you have no insurance at all you’d need to either rent with a credit card that offers Primary CDW (i.e. Sapphire Reserve/Ritz Carlton) or purchase it from the rental company. And FYI no credit card that I know of offer personal injury insurance.
I'm not looking for personal injury insurance I get that from the rental company. I am just asking about the CDW. I have never heard before that people without insurance need to to only use cards that offer primary CDW. My understanding is the exact opposite actually. That if you don't have an insurance policy the secondary insurance becomes primary by default at least when it comes to the coverage that allows for CDW. If the citi premier has totally stripped out any insurance for anyone on rentals then that will have to be crossed off the list and I will probably look at the venture or the plat.
@EAJuggalo wrote:Youre understanding is correct. Secondary coverage becomes primary if no personal coverage exists. So you would be covered just fine with the Freedom policy. I don't know what Venture has, but it looks like you would be good on a Platinum as well.
Hmm I didn't even think the freedom offered this benefit. I wonder if its the same as the CSR minus being primary vs secondary.
@red259 wrote:
@EAJuggalo wrote:Youre understanding is correct. Secondary coverage becomes primary if no personal coverage exists. So you would be covered just fine with the Freedom policy. I don't know what Venture has, but it looks like you would be good on a Platinum as well.
Hmm I didn't even think the freedom offered this benefit. I wonder if its the same as the CSR minus being primary vs secondary.
Both Freedoms (not sure about the Flex) offer the Auto Rental CDW. It's most likely the same, minus it being primary, but you'd have to read about the terms to make sure.
If it were me, I'd still use the Amex Platinum even if I didn't need the Primary coverage. It has much higher coverage than most secondary CDW coverages offered by most cards. Up to $75k for rental car damage & $5k personal injury per accident, plus $1k theft coverage for items in car.
Many secondary coverages don't offer any injury or personal items coverage, and don't offer enough to cover cars over a certain value (or outright won't cover them at all). $75k should be enough to cover any reasonable car you'd ever be renting, unless you have a habit of spending a fortune renting super-high-end european cars.
Total Loan Balance: $43k / $65k
Total SL: $78k