You do not have to buy any other add-ons. DO NOT buy the insurance. It is a total profit making add-on for the rental car company. If you use VISA or MC to buy the rental car via Hotwire, your credit card will cover the insurance. If you have a $250 deductible with your insurance company, then that's all you'd have to pay if you were in an accident. Your credit card (and very possibly your auto insurance company) will pay the rest.
When I rented my first car, I thoroughly checked into this. I called my credit card company and read the fine print on terms/conditions online. I called my insurance company, as well to make sure I was covered if I didn't buy the rental insurance at the counter. The rental agent might try to scare you into buying the insurance because he/she gets a commission when they sell it to you. They'll tell you that you will be responsible to pay the rental fee for the days the car is out of commission in a repair shop. That's not entirely true. The only way they can charge you this is if the rental car company is sold out of rental cars! This is a very rare circumstance, but could happen if you had the rental over a holiday. Even then, it is sooo rare, especially now with people cutting back on travel.
All you pay is what you see on the hotwire screen. Nothing else. And don't pay anything else at the counter when you pick up your rental. At times, the rental company has asked me if I want to upgrade for so much more per day. I say "no thanks." They say, "How many people do you have? How much luggage do you have?" Then they look at my family and say all our stuff will never fit in a mid-sized car (It always does). After they try to get me to upgrade and I say "no thanks" a few times, I find out I'm getting a "free upgrade" because the car I reserved is not back on the premises yet.
So they tried to sell me an upgrade because they didn't have the car there, and when I said no, they had to give me the upgrade for free. This has happened to me 50% of the time.
One more tip: Now that you know your Hotwire rental price, go on Priceline.com and bid on that same size rental car for the same days and try bidding about 5 or 6 dollars lower per day. I always get a lower price on priceline, but use hotwire as my starting point for pricing. On priceline, you have to go to the bid your own price link, and not the link where you'll get several rental car companies and prices. Those prices are high. You have to bid on the price to get the discount. You have to pay with your credit card before submitting the bid, but if the bid gets denied, your credit card is not charged and you can rebid a dollar more per day every 24 hours until your bid gets accepted. Keep going up a dollar a day until your bid gets accepted or until it's the same price as hotwire. Priceline is usually less though. I rented a car via priceline in Orlando for $12 per day, whereas on Hotwire, that same car was $19 per day.
