One of my favorite benefits of many credit cards is that they offer car rental insurance coverage. Exact details vary by card, but no matter how you look at it, it’s a money saver if you rent cars, even just occasionally. One of the requirements in order to take advantage of your credit card car rental insurance coverage is that you need to decline the coverage offered by the car rental company. In practice, this is usually pretty straightforward, but some countries have the insurance built into the car rental rate due to legal requirements. One such example is Italy.
Image source: https://parade.com/172732/marilynvossavant/172732/
In the past, I have been able to tell car rental companies to manually remove insurance coverage by providing proof that I have coverage through my credit card. However, on my most recent trip to Italy, the car rental agent wouldn’t budge about declining the insurance even with the proof of coverage.
That was my cue to call Chase Benefit Services because I didn’t want to pay extra for insurance coverage for a two week car rental, and I also didn’t want to risk not being covered in case something did happen to the rental car. I found out something very interesting when I called: there’s an internal policy that credit card coverage will still apply if you don’t decline the rental car company’s insurance coverage in areas where the insurance coverage is mandatory.
I still don’t entirely trust this, so in the future if it comes up again for my car rentals, I will always call Chase to verify and make sure that the information is notated in my account just in case I ever need to make a claim. Calling Chase is a lot easier than trying to force the car rental company to manually decline the insurance coverage! Have you been told the same thing by Chase or another credit card company? Let me know in the comments.
It seems your headline is misleading based on the information you received from your call with Chase. You don’t ALWAYS need to decline insurance… or You don’t need to decline insurance IN AREAS WHERE THE INSURANCE COVERAGE IS MANDATORY… would seem to be more accurate.
I agree, but the title would be much longer than it already is.
I’ve often wondered about that, in similar situations, but haven’t ever found anything definitive. Searching online in the past I’ve found a few anecdotes where someone called and was given a similar verbal response to what you received. But I’d sure feel better seeing it in writing as part of the CC insurance T&Cs.
Completely agree with you, Ryan. That’s why I recommend calling and having your account specifically notated so you know you’re covered.
As an insurance consultant I always find it strange that credit card companies want you to turn down the coverage for the credit card coverage to apply. To me they would have less exposure if they just allowed it. That way they could subrogate against the other policy if a claim occurs. In the case of CSR they could even add the legal language that they provide primary coverage but if you elect the rental car company coverage that the CSR coverage moved to secondary coverage.
Interesting insight! That makes more sense to me too. Hmm.
I think it’s worth noting explicitly that this post is about Italy’s mandatory Collision Damage Waver coverage, which is duplicated by many credit cards.
Trying to talk your way out of Italy’s mandatory Liability Insurance (on the basis of having a credit card) would be very foolish, of course…