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Comment by k1rac | Hacker News Reader

Always rent a car expecting an attempted to be ripped off.

Know their rules and be nice. I've had surprisingly good experiences with a company with bad rep.

Once i rented a car for 3 weeks for 0.73cents a day in low season. A fiat panda in south west europe. Im local there so it helped.

Always make a chitchat with the person in the counter, get their name and ask them how i can avoid any issues. They are surprisingly nice and i can always name drop their name to the final inspector so they think i know them. ... Or just buy their insurance.

Havent rented since covid thought.

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> Or just buy their insurance

Note that many credit cards cover your insurance.

Depends on where you are. Most credit card companies do not cover Republic of Ireland, for example. It’s odd because the same company does cover England so it isn’t the driving whole driving on the left thing.

The trick with Ireland is to buy a policy ahead of time that covers the EU. If you neglect to do this, you will need to buy the overpriced policy at the counter.

Many Irish roads, even near very popular cities and attractions, are extremely difficult to navigate in an automobile. Very very narrow with virtually no shoulder. Accident rates, especially among renters, must be very frequent.

https://images.app.goo.gl/arKbAkKnWK1Qqi3o9

This example is far from the most difficult, it actually has a center stripe and shoulder markings. Many similar roads are tighter with no markings, and also with blind hills and curves.

If I was an insurance provider, I'd certainly try to exclude Ireland.

Oh I know, I've driven in Ireland many times. Funny thing is, the only time I've had an issue was driving late at night on an empty road. Ran into a ditch. Perhaps the traffic keeps you hyper-focused.

Insurance costs in Ireland are much higher than the UK.

There are some unfortunate subtleties to this. Coverage from most credit cards that offer rental car insurance is secondary to your personal vehicle insurance -- which means that your vehicle insurance premiums would be impacted by an incident. Only a few cards offer primary rental car insurance.

They also don't cover damage to other cars, only to the rental vehicle itself. That's back on your personal insurance again.

They also may not cover all types of rental vehicles, such as vans.

Yup, I recently rented a car with an American Express Platinum card, which includes secondary coverage. I don't own a car, so I don't have auto insurance, and assumed vehicle to the damage would still be covered, I just wouldn't have liability coverage. But in order for the policy to pay out anything at all, you're required to have primary coverage.

So I ended up paying $300 or so for a scratched fender. Not the end of the world, and their estimate seemed fair, but I might buy the rental car insurance next time.

Next time, get the American Express Premium Car Rental Protection add-on as your primary? [1]

[1] https://feeservices.americanexpress.com/premium/car-rental-i...

Paying for the AMEX primary coverage is usually much cheaper than rental car coverage (since it's one-time instead of daily). Some Chase cards also offer primary coverage without a fee (but they are generally cards with significant annual fees).

This is a fantastic service. AmEx used to promote it reasonably heavily, but in the past few years I've rarely seen them mention it at all.

Wait, this is definitely news to me. I'm pretty sure secondary coverage becomes primary if you don't have personal insurance. I re-read the Amex terms and conditions and it says nothing about requiring primary coverage (https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/features-ben...).

That was exactly my understanding and, I think, a general consensus on how secondary insurance works for Amex Platinum.

Hmm, maybe I should resubmit the claim! Would be great if I'm wrong–the form required a primary insurance declaration and I gave up at that point.

EDIT: Thanks argonaut, that worked and the claim was able to go through! Proof of Cunningham's Law.

> They also don't cover damage to other cars, only to the rental vehicle itself.

But that's covered under the liability insurance, which is mandatory in most jurisdictions and included with base rental fees already. In the US it's mandatory, too, AFAIK, but the the default insurance will usually cover the minimum required by the state, so you may want to have a separate liability insurance after all with a higher coverage.

I think that's the case in most US states, but it isn't provided in California.

As noted below, very few credit cards offer primary insurance. The secondary insurance that the majority offer is mostly worthless.

The United Explorer card from Chase is one of the few that offers primary.

You also want to be sure they cover loss of use, which for a rental car would be the max daily rate for every day the damaged car is out of service for repair work.

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