Where are you going on your next vacation? If you don’t like the idea of driving your own vehicle to your destination, and you cannot afford to fly there, you may be considering renting a car for your trip. If you are using your credit card to pay for the car rental, there are some things you should know about the rental insurance.
The first thing you should do is read over the details that are in your credit card agreement. Some credit cards will give you collision and theft insurance coverage on your rental vehicle, but only if you use that credit card to charge the entire cost of the rental. You might also have to decline the rental company’s insurance, if you want to take advantage of what your credit card company can offer. If you already accepted the insurance from the rental company, it might negate the offer you could have gotten from your credit card company. Choose wisely.
Most credit cards won’t cover you for a long term rental. Make sure you read over the details of your credit card agreement, so you know how long your coverage lasted. Some credit cards will cover your rental vehicle for 30 or 31 days, while others will only cover it for fifteen days. If your vacation is only going to last a week, then you probably won’t have a problem. However, if you were planning on renting a car for most of the summer, then the time limit could become problematic for you.
You may run into problems concerning “loss of use”. Let’s say you get into an accident while driving the car you rented. The damage to the rental car requires it to be repaired before the rental company can rent it out again. Your credit card company might cover that loss of use.
However, that often requires the rental company to send specific utilization log to the credit card company. The credit card company wants to know how many other vehicles the rental car company still has available for them to make a profit from. Some rental car companies will refuse to send out a utilization log. This means that you will have to pay out of pocket for whatever the rental company considers to be enough money to cover their loss of use. It’s a nasty way for the rental company to treat their customers, but it does happen sometimes.
Image by Thomas Kohler on Flickr