I've tried posting this elsewhere with no luck. My situation is a bit unusual, so please bear with my background info. I am a US citizen (expat from Cal) living and working in Japan. I can claim the US or Japan as my official residence; however, I only hold a California driver's license. In the past, when traveling back to California, I have always rented my vehicles through the American websites (I have had the best experiences with Enterprise out of LAX). I have always chose my rental as a "resident" of the US and booked with either my American or Japanese credit cards. I have also always declined any supplemental insurance. For solo business trips, I never gave much thought to this. Now I am planning a family trip where I will be flying into San Jose and want to return my rental at LAX. Since I do not own car insurance in the US anymore, I have been doing a little research to find the most economical way to insure my rental. I noticed that on many websites (like Alamo, Avis, etc), I can choose resident of another country and actually get better rates than for US residents. In fact, residents of the UK appear to get amazing discounted rentals loaded with supplemental insurance. Japanese rates aren't quite as good, but still lower than US rates, but also do not include any additional insurance. My question is ... (thank you for bearing with me up till now) ... If I were to rent as a foreign resident at discounted rates and show up at the rental counter with my California license, would I be refused that foreign rate, even if I purchase using that foreign credit card? If anyone has ever tried this, I would be curious to know how this worked out for you. I'm not trying to scam the rental agencies, just trying to get a fair rate with added insurance protection since I am not technically a US resident. I should also specify how I discovered about this in the first place. All the rental sites identify my IP address as Japan, and a couple of them asked if I would like to continue shopping on the US site or go to the local site. If I click - go to local site - it redirects me to the UK site and makes my discounted reservation with full added insurance in British pounds. If I identify myself as a resident of Japan, I get a higher rate without insurance, but still cheaper than the US rate. Does this mean many Japanese are booking through UK sites in British pounds for rentals in the US? This seems very strange to me. And what do most foreign travelers do about insurance? Decline it,... accept it? Is it better to use my Japanese Gold card to waive extras or my American card? I do pay for premium rental insurance through my American AMEX card, but that is all secondary, and I don't have primary as I no longer have American auto insurance (or Japanese for that matter). Anyway, I'll probably end up renting through an American site as a resident of California and purchase supplemental insurance. It just doesn't seem fair, somehow, that some foreign (ie. UK) travelers can get lower rates, including insurance, than a local resident with an unblemished credit and driving record. Thanks for reading.