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[OM] (Very OT) Rental Car Insurance, UK style

Subject: [OM] (Very OT) Rental Car Insurance, UK style
From: Bob Whitmire <bwhitmire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 18:23:00 -0400
Awright, you persons of knowledge and experience. Listen up. (Please)

So I've been wading through the Byzantine World of auto rental for our upcoming 
trip to Scotland. To make a long story reasonably short, there is a 
headache-inducing phenomenon known by its initials, CDW, that is, Collision 
Damage Waiver.

So you go to a site, and enter your information, and the type of car you want. 
You get a price. It's typically low. You are delighted that a two-week rental 
for a compact car such as Volkswagen Golf will be roughly $300.

Then as you dig in, you find that for an additional, oh, $9 a day, you can get 
your CDW coverage, except it usually comes with a whopping deductible. I've 
seen them in the neighborhood of 1600 GBP. For the big sites, that's about as 
much info as you get unless you really dig in. Turns out the rest occurs at the 
rental counter after you've been beaten down by an overnight international 
flight. There's a full-court press to add coverage for almost everything, 
including being damaged by a toppling statue of Rob Roy.

You can buy "No Excess" (No Deductible in US)" insurance, for an even larger 
premium. But even if you do that, there are a few other hidden items. One is 
insurance for "loss of usage" of the rental car. And I've just recently 
learned, for example, about "tyre, windscreen and undercarriage" insurance, 
which is another hefty premium. Even at AAA, which has a contract with a 
company that handles your rental for you, tyre, windscreen and undercarriage 
insurance adds 22 GBP _a day_ to the rental.

Can that possibly be right?

I've also learned that credit card companies provide rental car insurance that 
appears to be pretty inclusive, but you have to dig in and actually call the 
Benefit Administrator to find out specifically what's covered.

Some companies that are highly rated such as Holiday Auto, offer a pretty 
comprehensive No Excess package, but upon close examination, one finds it does 
not include tyres, windscreens and undercarriages.

By the time you finish properly insuring your rental (my US company doesn't 
provide rental coverage overseas), the price of the rental has doubled, if not 
tripled.

What am I missing?

I _must_ be missing something.

 
--Bob Whitmire
Registered Neanderthal

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