The best card for
rental car collision protection is Visa, says Card Hub, followed by Discover,
American Express, and MasterCard. Card Hub, the big online credit card data
source, recently completed a rigorous study of "free" credit card
collision damage coverage, and, although I don't completely agree with the
conclusion, the detailed findings are useful:
- Availability. All
Visa Traditional, Rewards, and Premium Rewards cards; all Discover cards; and
all AmEx consumer cards include collision protection. The majority of
MasterCards also provide this coverage, but many standard cards do not.
Although this factor may be a measure of an overall card system's performance,
it is of less interest to individual cardholders: If you have a card with
coverage, it's as good as the others; if you don't, you need to get another
card.
- Excluded
vehicles. All cards exclude expensive and exotic cars, trucks, RVs, and large
vans, although they describe them in somewhat different terms. AmEx, however,
also excludes "large" SUVs such as Land Cruiser and Range Rover, an
important drawback for a few renters.
- Excluded
countries. AmEx excludes rentals in Australia, Ireland, Italy, Israel, Jamaica,
and New Zealand; MasterCard and Visa exclude Israel, Jamaica, and Ireland
(Republic and North); Discover does not exclude any countries but provides
limited overseas validity. This provision could be a deal-breaker for some AmEx
cardholders.
- Time limit. AmEx
covers individual rentals up to 30 days anywhere; Discover covers 30 days
anywhere and 45 days on rentals charged to a business card; MasterCard limits
coverage to 15 days on all rentals; and Visa limits coverage to 15 consecutive
days in your home country and 31 days in other countries. Only AmEx lists rules
that disallow consecutive rentals longer than 30 days.
- Driving
exclusions. AmEx, MasterCard, and Visa exclude collisions during off-road
driving; Discover doesn't say. AmEx and Discover cover accidents on unpaved but
publicly maintained roads; Visa does not. MasterCard excludes unpaved roads and
even paved roads not regularly maintained - a real potential gotcha. Beyond
that, all card agreements include a laundry list of the "usual
suspects" of excluded driving. Notable gotchas here are driving that
violates the contract in any way and driving by anyone not listed as a driver
on the contract.
- Loss of use
coverage. Arguments against reliance on credit card coverage often question
coverage for "loss of use" charges - charges rental companies add to
a collision bill to cover possible revenue loss during the repair process - and
supplemental charges for towing a damaged vehicle. The good news here is that
AmEx, MasterCard, and Visa cover such charges; only Discover does not - a real
deal-breaker.
Card Hub also rated
cards in terms of the process required to activate coverage. But it gave the
same score to all four cards, so the details aren't important to most of you.
For more detail, log onto
www.cardhub.com/edu/rental-car-insurance-credit-card-study.
I would add two
additional points.
- All ordinary
AmEx, Discover, MasterCard, and Visa collision coverage is secondary, which
means that the card pays only what you can't first recover from other
insurance. Diners Club, which the report did not cover, provides primary
coverage on all cards - a big plus &mdadsh; and you can extend AmEx
coverage to primary for a fee of $24.95 per rental of up to 42 consecutive
days.
- All credit cards
require that you refuse the rental company's collision-damage waiver (CDW), and
buying CDW negates a card's coverage. But base rental rates from some foreign
"discount" agencies include a mandatory basic high-deductible CDW.
The last time I checked, AmEx and Visa representatives said that as long as you
did not have the option to decline the bundled CDW, the card would pick up the
deductible, but MasterCard's rep said it would not.
All in all, the
Card Hub report validates what many others and I have been saying for years:
Rent a car with a card that provides collision coverage and avoid the rental
companies' rip-off CDW prices.
Source:chicagotribune.com
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