Personal Finance (Not Investing) • Car rentals - collision damage waiver (CDW)

Happy Sunday Bogleheads. On a recent vaca over the holidays, we went to Vegas. I knew it was going to be busy on 12/24 at the airports, but wow was it beyond horrible with regards to the car rental experience. Used Dollar. Will never make that mistake again. Even with a car reservation, it was 1.5h from entering the line at Dollar, to driving away in the car. Our flight was only 1 hr! Anyway, I bring this up b/c wow was that reservations rep pushy regarding the CDW. I opted out, as primary insurance would be through my State Farm, and secondary through my Citi (Costco) Visa since I paid with it. But it got me wondering, do most Bogleheads opt-out of car rental CDW?

Side-note, I learned that Dollar and Thrifty are owned by Hertz. I'll pay more in the future to go with Hertz, Alamo, Enterprise. Never had bad experiences (yet...) with Hertz, Alamo, or Enterprise.

I almost always use either the American Express Premium Car Rental Protection or my Chase Sapphire Preferred card, both or which are primary, as noted in this thread. I probably should always use the CSP, since it's free, but American Express was really good with my one and only incident about five years ago. A couple of times I have also used the Allianz coverage offered by Hotwire, when it was cheap compared to the rental car company;s coverage, to minimize any potential hassle from loss of use, etc. My liability coverage always comes from the State Farm coverage on my owned vehicle.

The rental car agents can be really pushy with CDW, for sure. I was at a PHX rental car counter with Enterprise during spring training baseball season a couple of years ago, and I was listing to the agent frightening tourists (many of them elderly) ahead of me about the special laws in Arizona that put all the risk of damage on the renter, regardless of insurance and credit cards. I am an Arizona native and frequent visitor, and knew the employee's spiel was misleading and nonsense. There must be a lot of employee incentives to peddle CDW.

Statistics: Posted by CardinalRule — Sat Jan 27, 2024 9:32 am — Replies 48 — Views 3986

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