I used to be fat dumb and happy in my belief that my USAA Platinium Visa coupled with my USAA Auto policy would protect me when renting cars for personal use in the US. Now I am fat dumb and totally confused.

I find the check-in and check-out procedures at rental car agencies borders on harassment as they try and encourage you to get their insurance. I thought this was limited to the smaller, more economical agencies. However, after reading these forums, I understand that the bigger rental car agencies also play the same games.

I thought it was the card provider that provided the CDW benefit not the type of card. I was wrong. The coverage comes from the type of card.

I called USAA and got pdf files comparing the card benefits of the different cards they offer. I know have a lot more meaningless information.

If your wallet contained every possible type of credit card, and if you were going to use one to charge your card rental, and if you wanted the maximumn benefit from your card for rental insurance, what card would you pick?

Do you think certain credit card types have more leverage than others with specific rental car agencies? ie You will have better coverage with VISA and Hertz than VISA and Joe's Not At the Airport Car Rental?

Will someone also comment on whether rental car agencies can actually collect for loss of use without utilization logs? If when you sign for your rental they require you to agree to this as a condition of the rental, are you stuck if you damage the car and they take weeks/months to repair it? Why repair a car if you know some fool has to pay for it while it is being repaired?

Thanks

Personally, I always use an Amex card (one actually from Amex, i.e., not an Amex issued by Citibank) when renting a car. I had an accident many years ago in a rental and Amex came through with flying colors.

I even use Amex when renting overseas where I would normally use a different MC or Visa with a lower forex charge. The difference is worth it to have Amex on my side if there is a problem.

By the way, the various Amex cards have different sorts of coverage. I personally use the Starwood, Costco or (when I had one) Delta cards.

As to the purported utilization charges, some states authorize them by state law, but, IMHO, they remain questionable--especially now when fleet utilization must be very low. There has been a lot of comment on this on various FT forums and on the web in general.

Had hail storm damage at Yellowstone National Park in September 2 years ago with a Thrifty rental from a franchisee which was lease-financed by some company based in Las Vegas!

The initial filing of claim with MC both by phone at JAC and by mail after we returned home was smooth. However, somewhere someone dropped the ball and nobody followed up the claim. Got a call from Thrifty's insurance handler in Las Vegas almost 5pm on day before X'mas Eve. The woman was trying to get hold of us before she proceeded to send the Thrifty bill to collection agency because she was not able to contact us (we went on a 10 day Caribbean cruise and just got back that day!) while MC insisted we haven't filed a claim when she called MC to inquire the claim status.

Long story short, after given the Thrifty's lease counter part the MC claim number, claim agent's name, plus a lot of phone tags in the coming 2 weeks, MC settled the $2250 repair bill no problem, but refused to pay the Loss of Revenue portion, citing insufficient date provided by the rental company, the Administration fee is not covered by MA (but covered by Visa). We negotiated with Thrifty's handler and paid $350 or so out of pocket.

From my research, the Loss of Revenue is very difficult to get paid. In fact the MC agent was ready to cut the check for the Repair and did not want to wait for the Fleet Utilitization data when I asked him to wait for that being faxed to his office. Hindsight, MC had no intent to pay that portion from the beginning.

I imagine if the rental car location is a corporate location, the process would be much different. In our case, it was not only a franchisee, but a company that the rental fleet was leases financed by some company in Las Vegas, when the franchisee itself has a company based in Billing, MT, with 2 rental locations, incl the one at JAC where we rented from. All the fleet paper work and repair estimates came from Billing, MT and all the insurance claim process was handled by the Las Vegas company - thus making the whole thing more complicated.

However, like I said, once the ball started rolling, the claim was settled in less than 3 weeks. Though I learn now that if you have a claim, dont expect the CC side would automatically handle it smoothly with the rental car company - you being the one who filed the claim, really need to follow up if you dont hear a thing one month after you submit the claim to make sure the claim is taken care off - DO NOT ASSUME they will settle between each other.

After the claim was settled, MC did send us a letter with details on what was paid and what was denied - the first letter we got had incorrect info though. I had to request a correction because I wanted it to show the items MC denied would match with what we paid out of pocket. The 2nd letter did have everything correctly detailed.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8703e/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/104)

I tend to use a World MasterCard, pricipally because it will still provide coverage even if I use a free-day or dollars-off coupon, as long as at least one full day's rental fee is charged to the card. Not all credit cards provide coverage if you use a coupon.

I'm not particularly worried about loss-of-use fees: if the rental company can't satisfy the MC insurer as to the legitimacy of such charges, I doubt that it could satisfy MC itself if I were to dispute the charge.

Administrative charges are more problematic, but at least for my rentals in New York State, it appears that state law does not permit the rental car company to charge this fee or loss-of-use fees.

The credit card LDW coverage is a big deal for me, as I do not own a car. For the OP, it's probably less important, as the cc coverage (except for that provided by Diners Club) is secondary to the coverage provided by his personal auto insurance policy.

I had a bad experience with AMEX. They did not cover several things -- I do not remember what exactly, as the damage was minor. I am using my other cards for rentals now.

The best is Diners club by far.
Free primary CDW, no hassles.

I guess one could have a car and potentially just carry just liability coverage to sidestep the secondary coverage issue.

A couple of terms that differ from card-type to card-type--
-excluded countries (watch out for Ireland, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, Australia, and maybe others, as those are countries excluded by one or more card types)
-maximum value of rental car/excluded makes & models
-max length of rental covered (can differ between domestic/international)
-primary/secondary (all except Diner's secondary in country of residence; some primary outside country of residence)

Many rental cars are leased fleets. They are returned to the manufacturers when the leases are up. They do need to repair the damages in order to get back the residual value.

Regarding the poster's comment about he can dispute the loss of usage claim put on his card, I would like to point this out that yes, he can, and credit card could possibly cite with him and charge back the rental car company. However, the rental car company can still go after you, by assigning your account to collection agency, as you do sign the rental car contract and are responsible for damage to the car since you decline the insurance. To us, a couple hundreds are not worth the hassle to deal with a collection agency, especially there is a potential the unpaid claim could go on the credit report. Then it is a lot more hassle to clear it up.

In our hail-damaged car, there were about 35 to 40 dings on the car top and the rear cover - it seemed the storm was blowing from the rear and the front of the car was protected somewhat by the body itself. It would take at least 3 to 4 days in total time to repair those dings and repaint the car. (there are time required between prep and paint, and may be more than one coat of paint). When we took the car at JAC, walk-up customers did not get any car - every rental company was out of cars - so we felt the loss of usage claim was legit, although of course they charged the full rate without any discount applied - and we all know that nobody rent a car without any kind of discount code... Well, may be there are still some folks do so, judging by those walk-up customers at the JAC counters...

Visa covers Admin fee up to certain amount (forgot). MC does not cover Admin fee.

Dont know about Diner. But AMEX has same exclusion list as MC. Last time I looked, other than New Zealand, The rest of countries are excluded by Visa as well.

However, since New Zealand is a no-fault and the renter is compulsory taking out basic LDW (included in the rental rate), you would need to have a letter from the rental car company to verify that you cannot voluntarily decline LDW, in order to satisfy Visa. Further more, when renting in NZ, the law allows the rental company to IMMEDIATELY CHARGE your card for the NZ 3000 and up "excess" (deductible) on the insurance. Such "excess" is refundable when you return the car without any damage / scratch / blown tires/ windshield breakage (actually I think Windshield is a separate insurance item). Whether you want to have such a charge put on your card no matter what, and try to make sure it is credited back when you return the car at the airport, is a personal choice. In our 3 trips to New Zealand, our experiences are, given the weather and road conditions, you will bound to have some dings and scratches no matter how careful you drive. At NZ22 a day for a Corolla, you can reduce the "excess" to NZ300 - so again it is a personal choice whether you want to buy the extra insurance. At current exchange rate, 1 NZD = 0.60 USD - that is a lot cheaper than the USD25 per day insurance in Florida!

The alternative is to rent much older cars from locally owned rental car companies - the cars generally are between 5 to 10 years old. If I am driving in South Island, I would definitely not to take such chance. You can be stranded in somewhere when your clunker died, and it may take days before you can get another car - the services usually are contracted to NZ AA and you can imagine that is not the fastest service.

Correct. That is exactly our case.

I had studied this and found out Citi Professional (Kind of personal card but belong to business field) provided primarily coverage when most personal cards provide secondary coverage only.

However, I had no real experience really using it.