I gave up my personal vehicle over 6 months ago and have been obtaining rental cars during each work assignment (provided by mom job/agency). I recently shared my living arrangement in Chicago, IL. I mentioned that my job pays for me to have a parking spot, which is in a garage next to my apartment building.
As I am only human, unfortunately one day I was absentmindedly backing out of my parking spot when I accidentally hit the huge metal pole next to my car. There was a big dent on my front side bumper. I immediately felt dumb but then I looked around and noticed a lot of people’s cars had a similar yellow dent (the metal pole is yellow). Clearly, I am not the only one that has been careless.
As per the damage, I was relieved because I knew my current assignment with Comp Health, always takes car rental insurance when booking me a reservation. In fact, when I returned my car, they just verified that I had car rental insurance (which I did), and no extra charges were made.
I felt lucky that it wasn’t my personal car, so I didn’t have to pay for the repairs, nor did I have to go through the process of getting it fixed.
Some agencies don’t provide car rental insurance. If that had been the case, I would have either had to pay for the repairs out of pocket or used my personal car insurance to cover the charges. Although I no longer have a personal vehicle, I still carry low cost car insurance. Thus, I have coverage when driving a car rental or even someone else’s car.
Despite having car insurance, I would rather not use it because I would be responsible for the $500 deductible. So, if an agency doesn’t provide car rental insurance, I will ask to pay for the car rental myself and have them reimburse me. This way, I can use my chase sapphire preferred credit card to pay, and as a benefit of the card it provides car rental insurance for free. I also use this benefit when I travel for leisure. I know many people that have used this benefit and it has saved them thousands of dollars. This is one of the main reasons I recommend this credit card on the ‘finances’ section of my blog.
Anyways, I figured I would use my small accident as an opportunity to share 3 ways you can have peace of mind when driving a car rental. Best case scenario is the agency will provide car rental insurance. If not, you can choose to use your own personal car insurance or pay with your chase sapphire preferred card to make use of their free benefit.
