Avis car rental insurance surprise!

[TimNDansMom]

Dh has been on a business trip in the US and purchased the Avis car rental insurance for SLI and LDW.

I just got a call from him asking for our car insurance company and address (not the policy number). He was filling out the paperwork on returning the car and said he couldn't leave until he provided our insurance company name and address. He had received a stone chip in the windshield and one morning the road was very icy and he slid into the curb on making a turn and banged a wheel and he thinks knocked it out of alignment. He said he was shocked to discover that the front tires were almost bald, showing the wear strip and the rear tires were not far behind! The car only had 24,000 miles on it.

I thought the whole purpose of buying the car rental company's insurance was so you could just walk away? Is it usual to have to provide the name and address of your own insurance in the event of something happening?

 

[OntFamily]

This does seem weird. The whole purpose of LDW is to eliminate the need to use your own insurance.

https://www.avis.com/AvisWeb/JSP/global/en/rentersguide/policies/us/US_Loss_Damage_Waiver.jsp


This smells like a car rental franchisee trying to limit their losses.

 

[busterblue]

LDW from rental car companies are huge cash cows.

We pay 30.00 cdn per year on our own insurance rider and are covered. We also us a gold card to get additional coverage (make sure your card still does this as some have quietly changed their benefits and deleted this type of stuff).

I agree that something smells wrong. I would have also photographed the tires and complained to Avis about their renting unsafe vehicles. Something really must be wrong with the car if the tires are shot at 24,000 miles. Sounds more like "rent a wreck" then Avis.

 

[TimNDansMom]

Actually, DH did take several photographs of the tires and submitted a complaint to Avis.

We do have car rental insurance on our policy plus LDW on our gold credit card but I objected to DH using our personal insurance when on business trips. I can't see how the company he works for is saving money (cut-backs) by not having their own car rental coverage when DH charged $500 for the rental of this car on his company credit card! $300 of that was the insurance! But I guess as long as he was using ours, it didn't matter!

Anyway, it looks like the report that he had to fill out (and he also stated the condition of the tires) was a standard form, but why they insisted on our insurance company's name is beyond me! I do hope that's the end of it!

 

[MaryannF]

What if you didn't have your own car insurance? Not everyone who has a drivers license owns a car so they wouldn't have car insurance. We always buy every insurance that can be bought simply because if we have an issue while driving a rental we don't want our rating with our car insurance to be affected. You could save some money by using your own insurance when renting but in the end pay for that privilege, if you have an accident, for a very long time with higher rates and poor ratings (making it difficult to switch companies if you so choose)

 

[TimNDansMom]

This is the first time DH has ever had an incident with a rental car and he probably wouldn't have had one this time if it weren't for the poor condition of the tires.

However, it's made us think about the next time we rent a car while on vacation, whether to purchase the insurance instead of using our own as we have in the past.

Our insurance company has recently come up with an additional premium of $35 per vehicle that protects against rate increases for the first accident. It was added to our policy for this year, at no charge, as a way of introducing this new feature.