You all know the awkardness of renting a car, and the sales rep will ask you if you want to buy rental car insurance. Their most popular pitch is that the worst could happen and you are stuck with buying them a new car. You try to remember if your auto insurance policy covers you for collision and/or liability in rental cars, but you can’t remember. Hell, you’ve never even read your auto insurance policy, let alone knowing whether it covers you for rental cars. Also, it’s not like they offer this coverage for an extra $5.00 per day. It’s about $25 to $30 a day, which can really increase your total rental bill.

Check out this article from USA Today about when you should and should not buy rental car insurance.

Personally, I never buy it. I think it’s a major rip-off, and it’s definitely a fact that these rental companies make major profits off selling the policy. That is why their sales people are so crazy about trying to sell you the policy. They’ll guilt or scare you into it, before you finally just break down and buy it. The fact is that most policies will cover you for rental cars. But, you need to do your research and make sure you know all of the conditions and exclusions in your policy. Some policies might exclude coverage in a foreign country, or it might only pay up to a certain amount for rental cars. If you don’t carry collision insurance on your own car, you might not be covered for property damage to rental cars. If your policy doesn’t cover rental cars, then you can usually add it onto your policy for literally $10 to $20 every six months. This is still a much better deal than buying the insurance from the rental car company.