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There are some unfortunate subtleties to this. Coverage from most credit cards that offer rental car insurance is secondary to your personal vehicle insurance -
by skuhn 5y ago
There are some unfortunate subtleties to this. Coverage from most credit cards that offer rental car insurance is secondary to your personal vehicle insurance -- which means that your vehicle insurance premiums would be impacted by an incident. Only a few cards offer primary rental car insurance.
They also don't cover damage to other cars, only to the rental vehicle itself. That's back on your personal insurance again.
They also may not cover all types of rental vehicles, such as vans.
- jlund-molfese 5y agoYup, I recently rented a car with an American Express Platinum card, which includes secondary coverage. I don't own a car, so I don't have auto insurance, and assumed vehicle to the damage would still be covered, I just wouldn't have liability coverage. But in order for the policy to pay out anything at all, you're required to have primary coverage. So I ended up paying $300 or so for a scratched fender. Not the end of the world, and their estimate seemed fair, but I might buy the rental car insurance next time.
- ciabattabread 5y agoNext time, get the American Express Premium Car Rental Protection add-on as your primary? [1] [1] https://feeservices.americanexpress.com/premium/car-rental-insurance-coverage/home.do https://feeservices.americanexpress.com/premium/car-rental-i...
- skuhn 5y agoPaying for the AMEX primary coverage is usually much cheaper than rental car coverage (since it's one-time instead of daily). Some Chase cards also offer primary coverage without a fee (but they are generally cards with significant annual fees).
- listenallyall 5y agoThis is a fantastic service. AmEx used to promote it reasonably heavily, but in the past few years I've rarely seen them mention it at all.
- argonaut 5y agoWait, this is definitely news to me. I'm pretty sure secondary coverage becomes primary if you don't have personal insurance. I re-read the Amex terms and conditions and it says nothing about requiring primary coverage (https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/features-benefits/policies/car-rental-loss-and-damage-insurance-terms.html https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/features-ben...).
- cromka 5y agoThat was exactly my understanding and, I think, a general consensus on how secondary insurance works for Amex Platinum.
- jlund-molfese 5y agoHmm, maybe I should resubmit the claim! Would be great if I'm wrong–the form required a primary insurance declaration and I gave up at that point. EDIT: Thanks argonaut, that worked and the claim was able to go through! Proof of Cunningham's Law.
- cromka 5y ago> They also don't cover damage to other cars, only to the rental vehicle itself. But that's covered under the liability insurance, which is mandatory in most jurisdictions and included with base rental fees already. In the US it's mandatory, too, AFAIK, but the the default insurance will usually cover the minimum required by the state, so you may want to have a separate liability insurance after all with a higher coverage.
- skuhn 5y agoI think that's the case in most US states, but it isn't provided in California.