If you own one of the top tier credit cards offered by the big banks, you likely also have one of the most convenient credit card travel perks: primary car rental insurance. This is a great perk from many of these cards and can save you a lot of money on your rentals, but the process to file a claim can sometimes be a little difficult to navigate. Let’s review what this means in practice, how your card can save you money when renting vehicles, and how you can make the claims process as easy as possible.
What is Primary Car Rental Insurance?
First thing first, let’s talk about the insurance itself, what it is, and why the term “primary” is so important when looking at coverage for your rental.
Fortunately we don’t need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the coverage parts of credit card insurance. Aside from stating that your card can offer physical damage coverage to your rented vehicle, we’ll just point you to our other article that compares all the insurance perks from several of the most popular cards instead.
Primary insurance means that the coverage offered by your card takes priority over your personal auto insurance in the event of an accident or theft involving a rental car. You won’t need to bother filing a claim with your auto insurance company, potentially saving you from increased premiums down the road. If you’re unaware, claim activity on your personal insurance policies will usually result in the insurance company jacking your rates up the following renewal term (whether they say they will or not).
Do All of the Premium Cards Offer Primary Coverage?
Nope, there are definitely some out there that are better than others when we’re talking about primary vs. secondary coverage. Of some of the more popular ultra-premium cards, the Chase Sapphire Reserve, Chase Sapphire Preferred, and Capital One Venture X cards all offer primary coverage for your rental.
This means that damage to your rental is covered by the insurance policy provided by the card. This does not mean that damage to someone else’s car or injury to another person caused by you and/or your car is covered. That type of coverage needs to be provided by your own personal insurance policy, or by purchasing one through a 3rd party (Click here to learn about SquareMouth insurance policies) or from the rental company itself.
Surprisingly, the American Express premium and ultra premium cards do not offer Primary coverage for car rentals, and instead rely on the renter’s own personal insurance policy to cover damages to the vehicles. Yikes!
What Kind of Coverage do these Cards Offer?
Primary vehicle damage coverage is by far the most valuable and sought-after perk in the insurance offerings on these cards, but some of them also offer additional coverages that may be beneficial. It’s important to say that not all cards offer the same perks, so it’s best to check your individual benefits guide to make sure you understand the full coverage offering before picking up your car (Click here easy access links to the top credit card benefits guides).
Some examples of these additional perks are:
- Theft: Covers the cost if your rental car is stolen.
- Loss of Use Charges: Reimburses you for fees charged by the rental company if they can’t rent the car while it’s being repaired following a covered incident.
- Towing Costs: Covers reasonable and customary towing to the nearest qualified repair facility (if required due to theft or damage to vehicle only).
- Administrative Fees: Any fees imposed by the car rental company (or other involved in the claim) that you’re obligated to pay.
Is Coverage Valid Worldwide?
For the most part, you’ll be able to benefit from credit card insurance in any country in the world. There are at least a handful of exceptions to this, and it takes more than just reading the benefit guide to find out what they are.
The Chase benefits guides don’t specifically list out which countries coverage is not valid in, and instead state that you’ll need to call the benefits administrator to ask about a specific country. Capital One, on the other hand, lists out the few countries that they don’t offer coverage in right in their guide: Israel, Jamaica, the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland. Even though Chase doesn’t list these countries in their benefits guide, I suspect the list of exclusions is the same considering it’s Visa that offers the actual insurance for both banks.
What Other Important Details Should I Know?
There’s no replacement for reading the entire benefits guide on your own to understand what is and isn’t included (Find a link to your card’s guide here), but the list below should be a good place to get you started if you just need some quick answers:
- Coverage length is limited to rentals of either 15 or 31 consecutive days or less (depending on domestic vs foreign rentals, and on card issuer).
- Credit card car rental insurance does NOT include liability coverage for damage to other cars or injuries. This means that any damage outside of damage to your rented vehicle is not covered.
- Ultra expensive, antique, exotic cars, specialty vehicles, cargo vans, pickup trucks, and motorcycles may be excluded.
- Off-road driving may void your coverage completely.
- You must pay the full cost of the rental with your credit card or rewards account (this varies from bank to bank; verify with your benefits guide).
How to File a Claim
We’ve talked about which cards offer what kinds of coverage, the limitations of each, and a few FAQ answers related to important info you should know. Now it’s time to talk about the process of filing a claim.
The process itself is pretty straightforward, but it takes a lot of legwork to see it through to the end. Be prepared for a bit of an uphill battle at times, and keep dated copies of everything you send in neatly organized so you can re-send if needed.
Prior to actually filing the claim online, you’ll have to deal with a representative of the car rental company and one from the insurance benefits administrator. Keep these things in mind as you work through the beginning steps of the claim:
- Notify the Benefits Administrator Immediately
As soon as it’s safe to do so, call the insurance benefit administrator and let them know you’ll need to file a claim (you can find their phone numbers in the benefits guides themselves). They’ll start the process of opening the claim right then, and allow you the opportunity to ask for a list of documents you’ll need to provide throughout the process. They can also sometimes assist as a liaison between you and the car rental company. Before you hang up with them, ask them to provide you a claim number so you can pull up all the info online when you get home. - Document Everything
Take pictures of the damage, obtain police reports (if applicable), and collect all rental car company paperwork issued pre and post-accident. This paperwork could include your rental agreement, repair cost estimates, or waivers they ask you to sign. - Be Prepared to Pay for the Damage
Depending on the extent of the damage, rental car company, and rental country, you may be required to pay for the damage to the vehicle when you return it to the rental agency. You may be able to negotiate your way out of this with the help of a representative from the insurance benefit desk. - Secure Documentation
In addition to the docs you’ll need to collect from the car rental company, start searching your credit card statements or award receipts that show you rented the vehicle with your card / rewards account. You’ll need to provide this to the claims examiner as part of the process.
Time to Wait
You’ve done the legwork, dug up old statements, copied all the documentation into your computer, and uploaded everything to the claim site.
Now what…?
Well, now you wait. And wait. And….wait….. This isn’t the fun part, and it’s where we see the most complaints from cardholders asking about the claims process. Due to staffing shortages, global events, or maybe just the popularity of premium credit cards combined with generally poor driving ability, the claims teams are ridiculously overworked. It’s not unheard of for you to sit in silence for weeks and weeks and weeks before you get any kind of update on your claim.
Except…who wants to wait? Yea, not ideal, and this is where persistence is going to pay off. It’ll be your mission to call into the claims center for weekly, or even daily, updates from now until your claim is paid. It’s a huge time suck, but it’ll make sure that your claim is being addressed in a timely manner, and they have an examiner assigned to it who’s actually reviewing your docs. Don’t be surprised if they request you to send in the same docs multiple times, either. The overworked and understaffed thing will sometimes cause misunderstandings on their end, and all you can really do is comply. Nicely.
Hopefully after a couple of weeks you’ll finally get confirmation that your docs were accepted, reviewed, and approved, and your check will be in the mail shortly thereafter. If not, rinse and repeat with the weekly or daily update calls until it gets resolved.
Getting to the Point
Premium credit card benefits like car rental insurance can offer huge savings in certain situations, but they’re not always easy to use. While you can’t force coverages like these to get closed quicker, you can help yourself by setting proper expectations and having a thorough understanding of exactly what the coverage offers and how it’s triggered.
Again, we strongly encourage anyone with one of these premium credit cards to read through their benefits guide to know exactly what kind of coverage they have and for what types of events. You can find a list of benefit guides for some of the most popular credit cards by clicking here and selecting your card.
If after reading this article you’re just not sure the “free” credit card insurance is for you (after all, it can take a lot of work to get paid), read about 3rd party coverages you can buy per-trip through aggregators like SquareMouth Insurance. They offer an incredibly easy-to-use interface that allows you to compare multiple policies at once side-by-side to make sure it has everything you need for your upcoming trip. Car rental insurance, trip delay, emergency medical, evacuation, lost baggage, and the list goes on and on… You can read more about SquareMouth from our article comparing their policies to credit card insurance policies here.
Still not sure what the right move is? Have no fear, thePointsPage is here! Take a look at our booking page for a 1-on-1 consult to talk about travel insurance and which option might be best for you. Click here to check availability and make your appointment today.
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