Car rental can be a costly business, especially when you take into account the local taxes and excess insurances that tend to get excluded from the rental company’s headline advertising (and then magically appear when you come to collect the car!).
Whilst you can’t avoid paying the local taxes, it is possible to save yourself a packet on the car hire excess insurance. When you hire a car, the rental company will usually provide you with accident and theft insurance, commonly referred to as Collision Damage Waiver (CDW). Although you are technically insured, you are still liable to the excess, which in some cases can run into thousands of pounds.
At the point of collection, the hire company will inform the customer of this potential risk and for an additional charge offer another insurance product to cover the excess. The customer does not have to accept the excess insurance and would be well within their rights to refuse it, however by declining they accept full responsibility for the excess charges.
Unfortunately the excess insurance sold by the car hire companies doesn’t tend to be cheap, with daily rates being as high as £10.50; so over the course of a two-week holiday, you would be looking to spend an additional £147.00 that you had not originally budgeted for.
Independent Car Hire Excess Insurance
Alternatively you could take out excess cover from an independent insurance company and potentially make some considerable savings. Through the car hire insurance promotional site Insurance4carrental.com you can find cover starting at £1.94 per day, with the total for the same two-week holiday coming to £27.16 and representing a saving of £119.84 against the car hire company’s offering.
Further savings can be made if you are likely to be renting a car more than a couple of times a year, by taking out an annual policy. These start at around £40.00 per annum, depending on where you are intending to rent the car and the number of family and friends who intend to drive the vehicle.
