Originally Posted by
SAPMAN
In Italy, I think theft coverage is mandatory -- so I guess DC would not cover the car for me. So might as well use my Cr. Card which has secondary coverage??
That may not help either. Your secondary coverage may exactly the same restrictions. Understand it very thoroughly.
Meanwhile, I suggest you call Diners and get clarification of whether mandatory theft coverage affects Diners collision coverage or not. (It's official called collision coverage, but in the benefits it states it also covers theft. So I'm not clear to what degree these are linked, because i"ve never yet rented in a country where theft coverage was mandatory.)
Originally Posted by
SAPMAN
sdsearch and yanxfann seem to diasagree. sd says not a credit card (more of a charge card like Penny's?) and yanx says it is a DC Mastercard. Guess that makes no difference to me as I pay off monthly anyway.
These statements are not in conflict. MasterCard can be a credit card, a debit card, a preloaded card, or -- in the case of Diners Club (North America) -- a charge card. MasterCard is simply the merchant card network that Diners Club now runs on. The merchant card network has only to do with the acceptance side of things, it's still the bank that determines the payment structure of the card (and thus charge vs credit).
Similarly, there are AMEXs that are charge cards (Gold with Membership Rewards, for example) and AMEXs that are credit cards (Blue, for example) from AMEX itself (ie, you don't even have to consider things like Citi's AMEX's to see that).
The difference would be in the way it reports to credit bureaus (charge cards don't report a credit limit, but instead report a high balance, which to a stupid computer can look like high utilitization), except that apparently (based on threads I've read here previoujsly) Diners US has not been reporting to any credit bureaus for quite a while.
Meanwhile, you can pay Diners US over time, but you have to "transfer" to a linked loan account manually, and there are restrictions on such transferring. (Though it's typically not a particularly good deal, it's a backstop that's there for emergencies at least. In mnst cases, if you have promotional balance transfer offers at other cards, those would be preferable.)