Avoid Paying Too Much For Car Rental Insurance

TTT 35 - Car Rental Insurance
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Jenn: Hey everyone, welcome back to Travel Tip Tuesday with the Travel Mug podcast. Meggan, this week I wanna talk about a tip I discovered while I was planning our upcoming trip to Florida, and we kind of just, well, we discovered it together in the fact that I was texting you of this

Meggan: right

Jenn: time while I was figuring it out.

So, on this trip we are renting a car for an extended period of time, which we've never done before. We've done like one day rentals before, but we've never done like the whole trip. Meggan, I know you guys have done this frequently.

Meggan: Yep.

Jenn: But when we were renting the car, which we're renting through Avis, of course when we're booking it, we're faced with the added insurance that the rental company tries to get you to buy.

And in our case, it doubled the cost of the car rental, which I assume is pretty standard across all car rental companies.

Meggan: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. .

Jenn: So naturally I was like, no. And I was looking for a cheaper way to make sure that we're still covered. I, you know, I don't wanna go without insurance .

Meggan: Right.

Jenn: But we made a quick call call to our insurance company that we use for our auto insurance, You know, in our everyday life, and we discovered that we were actually already covered in our current policy, so we actually didn't need any extra insurance. So right there we saved. I think $500 probably.

Meggan: Wow, that's significant savings. I mean, these days, 20 bucks is great, but five hundred's a big deal.

Jenn: Well, and when you know, that was all of the insurance that the car rental people like possibly offer you, but like it was a lot of money. So I'm really glad that we made that really quick phone call to our insurance company and then they emailed us a like a nice little copy of our policy that we could take with us so that we can prove that we have insurance. So that was really great. Of course, this is not gonna be the case for everyone, you know, that you don't necessarily already have this, this coverage, but it's worth checking with your current policy just in case. I also learned if you have CAA already, it covers you for like roadside assistance within North America, so.

Meggan: Oh, nice.

Jenn: I know. I'm like, oh. That's really cool. So Meggan, what has your experience been with car insurance while renting a car?

Meggan: We've done it all. So we've definitely used our own policy. We've taken the insurance from the company and gone with that. We've also used our credit card, which covered some of it as well.

So we've done it a few different ways. It really depends on my level of paranoia. It depends on the kind of car we've rent. . Um, And it depends on where, like what country are we in?

Jenn: Mm-hmm.

Meggan: So those are sort of the factors that we go by. I know we've been ripped off in certain instances, like in Ireland we took the tire and rim insurance because of course you're driving on the opposite side of the road and the roads are really narrow so they can get you and make you paranoid that you're gonna like scrape this rim

And I'm like, well maybe, we will, I dunno. and then in Iceland, I didn't realize we were gonna be driving on dirt roads, so we did not take the windshield insurance. And then I just worried the whole freaking time.

Jenn: Right.

Meggan: So, you know, there's some things to consider like that. Like where are you going? What is your policy cover?

You know, we also rented a, a luxury vehicle last time we traveled and our policy wouldn't have covered that. So you really have to keep those things in mind as well. But yeah, we've done all all of them and we've not had a bad experience either way, although I'm sure there's been times we've overpaid.

Jenn: Yeah, for sure. I think it is down to your level of comfort, for sure.

Meggan: Yeah.

Jenn: And yeah, take some time though before you just book it and book the car insurance through.

Meggan: Yes,

Jenn: the rental company. Take some time and research your options. Comes down to research every time,

Meggan: #research

Jenn: research.. Just look into it and see what options are out there because you could save 500 bucks,

Meggan: right! Like you in this economy.

Jenn: Yeah, take it. It's a win .

Meggan: That's right.

Jenn: Awesome. Well that was it. That's our quick tip this week at you can find us on social media at Travel Mug Podcast on our website, travel mug podcast.com. We would love it if you could support what we do here through Buy Me a Coffee. You'll get access to fun stuff, bloopers, maybe some early announcements that might be coming later this year.

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