Insurance on car rental outside of Germany

In preparation for my vacation and not belonging to ADAC where you had insurance for everything, I am working my way through the car rental jungle. I came across this term: "personeninsassenversicherung" and am not sure what this means. Is this insurance that covers the people inside the car just in case there is an accident or something?

I have been to nearly every car rental site I could find and am amazed at the "fine print". for example, most say it includes full liability insurance, but that you have to pay a deductible as well! here an exerpt: Haftpflicht-, Vollkasko- und Insassenunfallschutz 13.79 GBP pro Tag so to avoid paying a deductible. this is on top of the base rental price.

is "Insassenunfallschutz" the same as "personeninsassenversicherung".

It is standard procedure that you have to pay a deductible to the rental company if there is any damage causes to the car, regardless of who is at fault.

You should try Holiday Autos or FTI. They usually offer deals for rentals that give you all the insurances you need and also will refund you the damage excess (selbsbetiligung (SP)) should you be charged it by the rental company.

www.Holidayautos.de
www.fti.de

I used www.sunnycars.com a little while ago and they had pretty competitive prices.

btw - you might also want to check what kind of insurance might be already covered by your credit card

when ever I have rented cars, I usually get the package with the insurance in it, so I just pay the dectible if I have an accident. I usually end up renting from Europcar or Hertz.

I would never recommend renting direct from a rental company. Always better to do it over a consolidator who negotiate better deals. My favourites, at least to compare prices are:

Holiday Autos
Drive FTI (via the JustTravel website so they make something out of it)
Auto Europe
Sixt Holiday cars (OK, this IS a direct rental, but they do have good deals, even for a day or two)

All the above offer deals with full insurance and no excess (deductible, or Selbtsbeteiligung) which I think is important when making price comparisons. Most other companies charge extra for this, or may not even offer it quite so comprehensively.

YL6

I would also recommend Holiday Autos. I have booked with them a number of times and they were almost always the cheapest or very close to it. The good thing about them though is that they don't try to hide their charges like every other car rental company out there..

thx for that. i also stumbled across holiday autos and everything regarding insurance was presented up front. the fine print was obvious, you didn't have to search forever.

Where exactly is it that you're renting the car? Almost all credit cards cover collision, but you should check first with your credit card company (of course, it has to be the one you rent the card on, but if you want to change the card at the end of the rental, you usually can).

I'm not sure how the insurance works here, but I know that in the States, if you have car insurance, it will cover you on a rental car. You should ask your insurance company here. If you're renting the car for a short period (i.e. one or two days), it's worth it to buy their collision at ~9 $/EUR per day, since if anything happens there's no deductible. For anything longer, it's not worth it - just use your credit card coverage.

i just checked my credit card (visa with postbank) and there is no additional insurance included. now, if i had the gold plus card, then i'd get everything.
@ IPJ, I'll be rentiing the car in Scotland and at hte moment holiday autos has a special deal. glad i waited til today to rent the car.

Most (German, at least) credit cards may give you personal insurance on a rental car, but won't cover the CDW deductible... (e.g. you hit another vehicle, your fault, the rental company's insurance pay everything over €1000, but leave you to pay the that first €1000...). All the websites I mentioned cover this themselves, but subject to accident reporting conditions...

YL6

Most CDWs don't have a deductible.

Just booked from Holiday Autos (as I usually do) for Thursday collection at Gatwick.

Paid the £2 a day extra for some "damage excess waiver" toffee do-dah.

N.B. As I discovered last time:

Do not try and rent a car in the UK on your UK licence unless you have the A4 additional licence sheet. They won't let you have the car.

The system is bonkers! If you have a driving licence from any country OTHER than the UK you dont need any extra sheet (e.g. Egypt, Swaziland, Germany).

Likewise if using a UK licence in any country OTHER than the UK (e.g. Egypt, Swaziland, Germany) they are happy just with the credit card licence.

But UK photo licence in the UK? That will not do nicely sir.

All I can recommend is that you ask the people exactly what costs you would have to cover yourself, before you decide which cover to take.

I always take the reduced excess option but not the full cover as it isn't worth it, the frequency with which I hire..
and crashed my rental car yesterday. Thank God I had some sort of extra cover! The excess would have been 600 pounds, I only had to pay 300, the same as if I crashed my own car.

If your've booked through Holiday Autos remember that they will refund you the damage excess should any damage be caused to the car. So when the car rental company themselves ask you or try to get you to take an additional insurance to reduce this excess, DO NOT take it, because you dont need it.

just rented another car from holiday rental. was a pretty good deal for my usa vacation or so I thought (before I started looking at the extras): 260 Euro for a compact/4dr. plus the extra driver per day (10 USD). now there is the thing with Personeninsassenversicherung again, but get this, I can opt to pay for people who have no insurance:


translation: personal passenger insurance (pai) 7.00 USD a day + taxes covers personal damage also when the damage is caused by another driver, whether a hit-and-run driver or a driver that is under insured

why bother, right? it's a rental car. i'm covered, both the car & myself and my passengers, so why do they offer this? why should i want more insurance to cover a person who hits me who has no insurance. what are the potential disadvantages for to myself?

also for future reference, americans renting in the u.s.a:



translation: customers with american nationality (passport) can only rent a car if they have a european residence and a return flight.

so i guess i have to take my anmeldebestätigung with me since my address is not located on any of my documents?

They want to make money off you.

It always annoys me when I pick up a rental car in UK when travelling on business that they try to
get me to take extra insurances that my company wont pay anyway. Its a mean trick because
I reckon those who are not fluent in English might get pressured into it.

When travelling privately I usually book via Holidayautos & its all in.
Just had one issue when I had booked & paid Holiday autos for 3 days & Hertz tried to
charge me excess due to "late return" and Hertz was claiming they had only been paid for two.
Great finger-pointing session so you have to watch them like a hawk when you pick the car up.

Here is another new website for car rental

AutoEurope

It has websites in German and English - just change the .de or .com.

I have a friend who works for them and she says they have better deals than going directly through the big companies.

I used to love Holiday Autos but 2 things happened that annoyed me:

1) they took ages to send my confirmation email so I was left hanging and didn't receive it before I had to go to the airport

2) without giving ANY client notice in Spring 2006 they applied a new UK rule that *everyone* renting in the UK had to have their passport on them. This sucked because my husband only had his EU identification with him so I had to rent the car and drive the whole f++king time in and outside of London. Wrong side of the wheel, horrible traffic = no fun.