Car Hire Excess Insurance
Don’t pay unnecessary fees at the car hire desk!
Instead of paying for expensive car hire insurance add-ons, take out a single trip or annual car hire excess insurance policy, reduce your excess liabilty to zero and save money too!
- Choice of single trip or annual policies
- UK/Europe or worldwide cover
- Covers excess on theft and damage
- Can be used with any car hire provider
We arrange straightforward and low-cost alternatives to the expensive car hire excess insurance policies offered by car hire companies.
Questor Insurance- Daily cover from £2.99
- Annual policies from £44.98
- Drivers aged 21 to 84
insurance4carhire.com- Daily cover from £4.59
- Annual policies from £46.99
- Drivers aged 21 to 85
What is a car hire ‘excess’?
If you hire a car and it’s damaged or stolen, you’ll be responsible for paying a certain amount towards repairing or replacing it. This is called an ‘excess’. There is a limit to how much car hire excess you’ll need to pay and the rest of the claim will be covered by the hire company’s cover.
Let’s say that a car hire agreement asks for an excess of £1,000, you have an accident and the price to repair the damage is £2,500. You’d need to pay the £1,000 excess fee and your rental firm would pay the remaining £1,500.
Why Should I Buy a Separate Car Hire Excess Insurance Policy?
Don’t pay for expensive excess insurance add-ons at the car hire desk. Compare single trip and annual policies before you go and you could save a fortune!
If like us you have ever used a car hire company, you know the experience at the car rental desk can sometime leave a bitter taste in your mouth.
For those new to hiring cars and vans, the advertised price is often not the price you pay when you pick up the car. The extras the car hire companies want to sell are hidden deep in the rental terms and conditions and can sometimes double or treble what you think you’re paying. You end up feeling deceived and ripped off by the car hire company.
When hiring a car or van, the excess on that vehicle can be as much as £2,000. Usually included as standard in the UK and Europe (but not in the USA/Canada) Collision Damage Waiver (CDW) or Loss Damage Waiver (LDW) will reduce the amount you need to pay if you’re involved in an accident or need to make a claim under their insurance policy. However, even with this the excess could still be as high as £1,000.
The car hire company will probably try to sell you an add-on (sometimes referred to as Super Collision Damage Waiver, SCDW) that would reduce this excess to zero but this is often expensive, adding up to £25 per day to your car hire cost in some cases!
By taking out your own car hire excess policy, this means you could save over £100 per week when hiring a car or van!
With a car hire excess policy you will often get more cover and if you have to make a claim, you will be reimbursed for the full excess. These policies may also include commercial vehicles, windscreens, misfueling, business use and other named drivers using the car.
Arriving tired after a flight, I went to hire a car and got stung by large car rental company for €30 a day! Their policy doubled what I thought I was going to pay, leading us to launch this website to help other customers not get ripped off by car hire companies. The smart car hire customer always buys their own excess reimbursement policy annually with prices starting at around £40 for the year. This is a huge saving on anything a car hire company will sell you and even if you’re just hiring a car for a few days, it’s worth it!
As with any insurance product, always read the policy wording carefully before you buy to make sure it suits your needs and so that you know exactly is and isn’t covered and what you’d have to do in the event that you did need to make a claim under that policy.
GBQuotes.com does not recommend any particular insurance company or policy and any inclusion on this page does not constitute an implied endorsement.
We may receive a commission payment from any successful referrals from this page and this helps to fund the maintenance and on-going operation of the site.