Rental Car Insurance: Good or Bad?

You may have been tricked into buying unnecessary insurance before, but one type of insurance that certainly isn’t just a clever marketing ploy is insurance from rental car companies. For most people who ask whether they need to buy coverage through the rental car company when they rent a car, the answer is almost always “yes”.

In the event of damage to their vehicle, many rental car companies hold you responsible for a lot more than your traditional auto insurance policy is going to cover. Depreciation is just one example. Unless you have insurance through a company that has an agreement with certain rental agencies, such as Erie with Enterprise, you should read the fine print of both your auto insurance policy and your rental car contract carefully before you refuse rental car insurance.

If you have any questions about this or any of your other insurance needs, please contact our Johnson City office today at (423) 292-4142, or send an email to help@veritasrm.com. We would be happy to give you more information and help answer any of your questions.

What is Full Coverage?

Click here to listen as Andrew Darlington sits down to explain the basics of full coverage.

Let’s talk about auto insurance. Everybody calls in and says, “I need full coverage on my vehicle.” The question is, what exactly is full coverage? There are a lot of different coverages out there—comprehensive, collision, towing, labor, rental car coverage, new car replacement, OEM parts repair. What exactly is full coverage? We will break that down for you.

Comprehensive and Collision

What most people mean when they say full coverage is comprehensive and collision coverage. Collision covers when you hit something—when you drive your car into something, that is a collision claim. It can’t involve blood, so if you hit a person or animal, that is actually a comprehensive claim. So a collision claim is when you hit something inanimate with your car, and the insurance company pays to fix your car.

Think of comprehensive coverage as something happening to your car like a tree limb falling on it, lightning hits it, someone keys it in the parking lot, or you hit a deer or a person. Those are comprehensive claims. Comprehensive and collision pay to fix your car if something happens to it when it was not someone else’s fault.

Roadside Assistance

Roadside assistance is a great coverage to have as well. It is not very expensive, and it will give you gas if you are broken down on the side of the road, it will pay for towing, and will generally cover some quick repairs by the side of the road like jumpstarting or getting your car unlocked. You don’t want to have a lot of those claims because the insurance company might not be happy with you and might adjust your rates, but it is always good to have in the event you need it.

Better Car Replacement

Better car replacement is where they upgrade your vehicle in the event you have a claim. If you have a claim, most insurance companies are going to a good job giving you the value of your car. But this is the problem—no one ever thinks that their car is worth the same as what someone else thinks it is worth. If I am selling a car, I am going to want to sell it for a lot more than you are willing to pay for it. And if I wreck my car, I would think there is no way I am going to get a car exactly like it. What the better car or newer car replacement coverage does is to upgrade your car so that you get what you think your car is worth, not what it is actually worth.

Contact Us!

Those are some of the coverages you need to consider so that if you are adding full coverage to your policy, you know exactly what to ask about to make sure you are getting the auto coverage you need.

If you need car insurance in Johnson City or the Tri-Cities, or if you just want to see if we could save you money on your auto insurance, give us a call at (423) 292-4142. Tammy in our office will give you a quick and free quote over the phone. We will work with you to make sure you, your family, and your car are properly protected.