'free Car Hire'

[hudsom]

decided today to not take the free hire offerred with Airtours, but instead to reserve with Hertz (with AA discount) saving £100 and upgrading to Intermediate car, due to the unbelievable £400+ caost of the recommended insurance.
You can get an all inclusive car from Dollar cheaper than the recommended insurance cover price. How can they call it a 'FREE HIRE CAR'?????

 

[WILDCATS]

I always take car hire independently come to think of it I book the villa, flight,& holiday insurance all separate at least you should not get ripped off then. Like the saying goes "you don't get owt for nowt"

 

[rob@rar.org.uk]

You can decline the over-priced insurance sold by tour operators with 'free car hire' and buy a cheaper policy instead. We've used for several years the American Express Premium Travel Insurance policy which includes CDW and SLI cover for car hire in North America. Although it is more expensive than most travel policies the fact that it covers you for car hire could save you lots of money. Family cover cost about £280, and provides a very well specified travel policy and car hire cover for a complete year. You do not need to have an Amex card to buy this insurance.

There are alternatives to the Amex policy, including a Natwest policy for their card holders, and an independent insurance broker which sells a free-standing car hire policy. Searching this board should bring up more details on these.

Whenever we've done the calculations it has been cheaper for us to keep the 'free' car hire and take out a seperate insurance policy, than to ignore the 'free' car hire and make a seperate hire agreement with another company. If you are making more than one trip to the USA in 12 months taking out a policy like Amex's will save you lots of money over the year.

Regards

Rob

 

[Hilary]

How can they call it a 'FREE HIRE CAR'?????

LOL! They don't call it free hire car , they call it free car hire !

As Rob says, there are ways of accepting the free car hire and arranging your own insurances. We tried this last year for the first time (using the NatWest scheme) and were very surpirsed at how easy it was.