Does anyone bother with the extra insurance when hiring a car?

[jennymac]

We are going to be hiring a car in France this year and I was wondering whether people tended to take the "maxi cover" insurance so they don't have to pay the excess in case of an accident/theft etc? With europcar, the car hire will be £200 and then an extra £95 for the extra cover. They say their excess is £1200 which seems very steep.

With that sort of excess, I would take the extra cover. Or shop around to try to find cheaper car hire.

Always - it only takes a slight scratch from somebody else e.g. in a car park and they will thump you for as much of the excess as possible.

We hire cars a lot and always take the cover to reduce the excess to zero. Our reasoning is that we can afford the £95 but not £1200.

There are companies that specialise in this sort of insurance - you might be able to get it cheaper. Can't recommend any though as we always hire locally and the policies seem to exclude any vehicles hired within x miles of your home.

we did this. in portugal they still insisted that they had our credit card details as they said they charged us the excess and then we had to get the money from the insurance company - if there was any damage

Thanks. Most people I have asked in work said they don't bother but I think for peace of mind I will take it anyway.

We also ensure that we reduce the excess to zero - it takes a whole lot of worry away - it's generally a small amount of money compared to the large amount of money you may be faced with if you have an accident, or the car is stolen, or its damaged in a car park and any other of the many ways that you can end up paying.

You are on holiday so you don't need the worry of whether the car is safe or not - even if you are a really careful driver and have never had an accident, the chances of having an accident must increase if you are not used to driving on the right.

The other thing is that someone else can easily damage your hire car in a car park, on the street etc and then disappear without leaving a note (it happens in the UK too!!!) - or even if you see them you may not be able to get all the details because of the language barrier, either way you end up footing the bill. Even for a small dent you can imagine you will be stung for more than £95 and have a lot more stress and hassle

Also when you return your hire car you just hand it back, no need to check for damage and no issues if the hire company find something that you were not aware of!

Hope this helps

OP - DONT take out the insurance that they offer you. There are specialist firms that will offer that insurance and reduce the excess for about a third of the price:

this explains it and gives links to the firms you can buy this from. The car hire firms prey on you not being prepared and arranging this in advance, and then sting you for it!

No one should buy this type of insurance from car hire firms. By all means buy it for peace of mind - but from a much cheaper source!

I agree with notyummy to a certain extent, you can get it cheaper but then it is you who has to do all of the running around to sort out if there is a problem - If you don't take the rental companys insurance, the the rental company hold you responsible for damage not your insurance company so you may be faced with having to pay out to the rental company and then claim back from your insurers and you still take a risk that your separately bought insurance won't pay out.

But I also agree, whichever way you choose to insure this needs to be sorted out when you book the car , not at the hire desk in the airport - they will offer all kinds of insurance for all kinds of things and they will try to bamboozle you into stuff you don't want or don't need.

DO IT! We didn't and paid 550 pounds for a minute scratch on a brand new car that we hired in England.

Thanks for the tip notyummy - seems like a much better idea to do this!