No idea - but hiring via Holiday Autos and taking their additional cover (a lot cheaper than the hire companies own cover) does work. I know they paid out for me. Hire car worth nearly ?15k was a written off.
Rob
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No rroblems at all. I joined them about 5 years ago, weeks after they started operating. They refunded me a 500 euro XS in about 5 weeks and my only 'loss' was on the movement of the exchange rate in that time. I have used them ever since but have not had to claim.
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They refunded me
I know there's been much discussion on Disney forums about using them for car hire in the US where additional insurances add up to a lot of money (and profit for the rental companies) but apparently there have been difficuties getting US rental companies to accept that it's valid meaning you have to leave a hefty deposit and you could potentially be expected to pay unlimited costs upfront in the event of an incident and then claim it back.
For the excess itself, you can normally waive that with a relatively small additional payment.
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BP - it depends your definition of a "Small additional payment". I hired a Hertz car in Germany for a week, the hire charge was £150 and so was the CDW XS waiver charge. I had my own cover with the company mentioned in the thread, for £49 for ALL hires in Europe for 12 months. I can't imagine that a USA Excess would be less than in Germany - rather the reverse!
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so was the CDW XS waiver charge.
OK, that's a lot! £150 to waive an excess is insane.
I haven't hired in Europe for years apart from Van I got for 24hrs recently. That was £3.50 to change the excess from £1000 to £100.
In the US it typically costs maybe $200 to hire a car for a week and all of the various insurances (LDW, CDW, SLI etc etc) together would cost about the same.
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insurance4carhire.com is perfectly fine if you are hiring away from home [read their t&c carefully].
If hiring locally, an alternative is to go via lastminute.com [i.e. holiday autos] but you may still be left with some XS charges that are not covered [eg. glass and tyre damage].
The XS waiver charges are usually quite high. With some companies such as Apex Car Rental, you are not allowed to remove the compulsory XS at all!
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When I hired a car in Tuscany in 2005 I probably paid close to 50% extra to fully insure it. The following year we used Holiday Autos and I paid (I think) about £3.50 per day for their excess cover.
Since the car was written off quite quickly after departing the airport then I found out it really worked. I got charged the excess to begin with and claimed it back. Only lost out due to the fluctuation in the ?/£ exchange rate. Initially got charged ?400 I think but it should have been ?300 via Holiday Auto booking. But I got it back.
Since then I don't think my wife would let me drive a hire car abroad - I would never drive on the roads near Milan Malpensa again.
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