Check whether your credit card covers collision damage and theft on rental cars before your next trip. Many cards do, but only if you pay for the whole rental with that card and decline the counter’s damage waiver. Read your card’s benefits guide first to confirm the coverage, then skip the waiver’s daily charge.
That charge adds up fast. The collision damage waiver means the rental company won’t bill you if the car is damaged or stolen. Experian puts its typical price at $25 to $41 a day.
Say a week-long vacation rental costs $500. Even at the low end, the waiver adds $175, a 35% increase.
Buying the waiver as a backup doesn’t give you two layers of protection. Under Visa’s terms, accepting it cancels the card’s benefit, so you’d be paying for coverage you already had.
Before you travel, check the details that decide whether you’re covered:
- Find the auto rental coverage in your card’s guide to benefits and note whether it’s primary or secondary. Primary coverage pays before your auto insurance does. Secondary coverage, the more common kind, means you file with your own insurer first, and the card picks up what your policy doesn’t, such as the deductible.
- Read the exclusions. The card’s coverage leaves out liability, meaning damage or injuries you cause to others, so that protection has to come from your own auto policy or the counter’s separate liability coverage. Visa’s terms also exclude trucks and expensive, exotic, or antique cars. They don’t cover rentals in Israel, Jamaica, Ireland, or Northern Ireland, or any rental longer than 15 consecutive days at home or 31 abroad.
- Ask your auto insurer whether your policy extends to rental cars and what deductible you’d owe. If you’re renting for work, ask your employer what covers you, because a personal policy generally doesn’t apply on business trips.
At the counter, put the whole rental on the card that covers you and decline the collision or loss damage waiver on the agreement. Then look the car over for existing damage before you drive away, so you aren’t charged for a dent that was already there.
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