Originally Posted by
AdMEL
In the case of private vehicles, your comprehensive car insurance provides cover for damage to your car or theft, plus legal lilability for third party property damage. Legal liability limit is usually $5M, $10 or $20M. The excess for this type of policy is usually approx. AU$500, but can be reduced or increased. Third party property damage only policies are also avaialble. Unfortunately, none of these policies include cover for leisure rentals (they do sometimes cover rental when you're is being repaired or has been stolen).
With regard to the $1M third party liability you can purchase from US car rental companies - this amount seems quite low!
And your $5, $10, or $20 million coverage limits seem quite high!
Our $1m limit on an SLI policy seems high because
it is high relative to the low state minimums (well under $100,000 in most states) and even the liability limits typically carried by most middle-class families. Again, people with assets to protect have limits and umbrella policies that cover significantly more, but I would venture that most Americans are not in that boat (look at the rate of Americans with credit card debt--we're not good at managing our money).
I haven't heard any sort of cries to raise the minimums, so obviously the current system here seems to be acceptable to most people...
Originally Posted by
AdMEL
Thanks for pointing this out. I am in the process of arranging a hire car from SFO for 3 weeks next month, so I'll make sure it is included.
In my experience, the best deals for overseas renters coming to the U.S. are the prepaid fully inclusive sites based out of the UK (
http://dollar.co.uk,
http://prepaid.thrifty.co.uk,
http://www.alamo.co.uk/RatesAndReser...ect_default=US, etc.). As an Aussie resident, you should qualify to use those (it gives you the option to choose your country of residence to verify your validity). Those rates include all the coverage you need to be fully protected at rates MUCH lower than buying the products separately at the rental counter.
Originally Posted by
AdMEL
No, it's not. For Australian rentals, as far as I am aware, the cards issued by two banks provide it - one only on platinum cards at no additonal cost (covers AU$5,500 excess with zero excess) and one on all cards at an additional cost of AU$24 p.a. (covers AU$2,400 excess with AU$350 excess). Other than that, I believe Amercian Express offers it on either a platinum charge card or platinum credit card and Citibank may also offer it on platinum cards. I'm not aware of any others.
Like I said, maybe there's a market opportunity. Or since these cards DO exist already, maybe the real work is in marketing them. Why wouldn't every Aussie have one? (Are the annual fees too high?)
Originally Posted by
AdMEL
Before I forget, your Autoslash website is fantastic! Not much use for us Aussies though, as it appears that we get lower rates than US residents! At least, with hertz that is the case.
Thanks for the feedback! We'll be expanding our focus to look at international markets in more detail in the future, and this information helps us to make sure we can address these kinds of issues.
