Rental Car Insurance: Do You Really Need It?

Sales pitches can be downright boring and annoying, especially when you’re running late for an appointment but are stopped on your way and forced to listen to them. Most of them are unnecessary–that fast-and-easy chopping machine wouldn’t actually be of use to you because you’re confident enough of your knife-wielding skills, and you don’t really need that convenient travel steam iron because of what worth would dry cleaners be to you then? But if you are one who loves traveling and driving, the sales pitch for rental car insurance might actually be something you need to hear and seriously consider.
Rental car insurance is for people who love to travel but can’t bring their cars to faraway places and so have to rent cars. You may or may not need it. To find out, you have to get in touch with three parties: your car insurance company, credit card company, and corporation.
First, you have to check with your car insurance company if renting a car is part of the coverage. You don’t want to be paying for additional coverage which you actually already have. If you’re not a car owner at all and therefore have no car insurance but you rent cars frequently, you can do away with repetitive insurance fees by purchasing a non-owner liability policy. It may cost between $200 and $500 a year.
If your personal auto policy does not cover rentals, don’t say yes to rental car insurance just yet because if you’re paying for your car rental at Enterprise with a credit card, you can call your credit card company to find out whether they can provide you your coverage or not. They may only be able to cover any damages to your rented car should you get in an accident, not shouldering any liability claims against you, but it would be better than having no coverage at all.
Also, if you’re traveling for company business, you might want to check if you’re already provided with full coverage by the travel policy of your company.
If you truly–and unfortunately–are not and cannot be covered by any of the aforementioned policies and you don’t think a non-owner liability policy would just be a waste to you because you don’t rent cars frequently, then go ahead and purchase car rental insurance. No matter how confident you are of your driving skills, again, it’s better to have coverage than none at all.

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