Rental sCARe Mongering
Announcement posted by Tripcover 25 Oct 2017
The other day I received a strange comment on our Facebook ad, so I checked their profile and found out that they worked for Thrifty but failed to disclose.
Here is their comment/queston:
“Just so long as they realise they have to have up to $4500 available to pay the excess in the first instance. It’s only an excess refund policy.”
Not true. I went to my local Thrify depot and was told how it works.
It is optional if you take their CDW – Collision Damage Weaver as it is to take the cover
that we sell for Allainz. If the customer does not take their CDW then that is fine
and the car rental company will take a small amount out of your credit card as a deposit.
If you don’t have the funds to pay for major damage then that is their problem not yours.
If you have a debt card they will take some $750 out as surety. But once again if the damage cost exceed what you have in your bank then that is their problem not yours.
We ensure that we warn our customers on our home page of what our product is ie
a typical, insurance reimbursement, policy.
But it is true that if you have an accident they will assess how much and will err on caution and usually charge your card around $4000 and refund later when they have
an accurate quote.
It would be up to our customer to then submit a claim with Allianz and once completed
would be refunded within 10 working days.
The car rental companies are not happy that we sell this insurance cover as they make a large degree of their profits from their CDW and have been doing so in Australia for the last 50 or so years.
Tripcover was the first standalone reseller of this type of car rental excess insurance policy in Australia, starting in Jan 2012. We now sell over $1.5M worth of cover each year and it is growing annually with a number of new players in the market also.
Thrifty, Avis and all the other major car rental companies have failed to react to our foray into this market, other than try scare mongering, but like all lazy and greedy incumbents they may rue the day that they failed to heed the complaints of their customers and our warnings.