Just what is annual car hire insurance? Hiring a car is often the best way to see the sights when you’re on holiday. Whether you want to go exploring, find it difficult to see all the sights using public transport, or merely want to avoiding running up a massive expenditure on cab fares, hiring a car is often a great excuse to really get to know wherever it is you’re choosing to vacation.
However, that’s not to say it’s always simple; the last thing you want when you’re just about to start your holiday is to spend time at a hire centre counter trying to work out which form of insurance is best for you. Despite this, many people find the huge variety in cover plans extremely complicated, often leading them to spend money unnecessarily on cover that they don’t really need, when they might be better off with an annual car hire insurance package instead.
Car rental insurance works in a similar way to any car insurance: it’s a way of making sure that you don’t end up being entirely responsible for the repair bill, which could end up costing you an absolute fortune otherwise. However, the excess attached to rental policies is normally far higher than you’d expect to find on a standard car insurance policy such as the one you have on your vehicle back home.
An excess is the amount of money you’re expected to pay before the insurance starts paying – say you have an excess of £100, you’d pay the first £100 of any repair costs, and the insurance company would pay the remainder. For car rental insurance purposes, the excess is usually much higher (often up to a thousand pounds), which means that any damage to the car could end up costing you a lot of money, as your standard package might not be adequate to keep you covered.
Annual car hire insurance is often a good way of making sure you have a sufficient level of protection before you set off on holiday. It’s usually purchased online, and as such assumes you know you’re going to be renting a car before you get to your destination, but will allow you to cut down your excess to a much more manageable level.
Annual car hire insurance means that you can book yourself a CDW (collision damage waiver) insurance policy that will apply to any cars you rent for a year; while this can work out more expensive than getting day-by-day cover over the internet, it can save you an absolute fortune if you plan on renting more than one car abroad in any twelvemonth period. Additionally, it’s important to note that it’s generally massively cheaper than trying to get the same cover over the counter once you reach your destination, and so a little foresight could go a long way.
Whether you choose to get annual car hire insurance or a day by day package, it can be a great way to make sure you don’t end up paying a massive excess charge should you be involved in an accident, which can help to put your mind at rest and really allow you to enjoy your holiday.