Hire Car Insurance

When you rent a car, two critical inspections are made – the first when you take delivery of the vehicle, and the second when you return it to the rental company’s depot.

These are critical since the first establishes the condition the vehicle was in when you took possession of it and the second compares this with its condition upon its return.

The importance of this second inspection is underlined in guidance published by the European Consumer Centre about hiring a car.

Although you are responsible for any damage the vehicle suffers between these two inspections, your liability is typically covered by an insurance package which you bought when paying for the hire of the vehicle.

What that insurance does not cover, however, is your remaining financial responsibility in the shape of the excess on that insurance – and excesses may be as high as £1,000 to £1,500, depending on the vehicle you are hiring and the country in which you are driving it.

Hire Car Excess Insurance

Aware of your natural concern about assuming the risk of having to pay an excess of anything like this amount, the car rental company is almost certain to offer excess insurance to cover that liability.

Whilst hire car companies might be experts in car rental, however, the same thing might not be said about their knowledge and understanding of insurance. As a result, the excess insurance they offer may represent poor value for money and still leave damage to certain areas of the vehicle unprotected – typically, the undercarriage, roof, wheels, tyres and windows.

An invariably more price-competitive option is to buy your excess insurance protection from an entirely independent, UK-based specialist insurer – such as us here at Bettersafe. We don’t claim to be experts in the hire of cars, but we do know a thing or two about every aspect of the car hire excess insurance – unlike your car rental company.

Bettersafe excess insurance plans allow you to choose the amount of excess you want to protect, so that – provided you have purchased sufficient cover – you may claim reimbursement of any amount of excess you may have had to pay the car rental company for loss or damage to the vehicle. Our insurance also covers damage to those otherwise unprotected parts of the car such as its undercarriage, roof, windows, wheels and tyres.

You might go one step better and ensure that your hire car excess remains safely protected no matter how many times you travel abroad during the year, and how many times you hire a car, by purchasing still more economical annual, multi-trip excess insurance.