Amex Platinum insurance pays me again – this time for car hire

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• harry says:

  5 Feb5 February 07:53

  Barclays Travel Plus pack – £13.50 a month – may be of interest to the over-70s. Age exclusion here is under 80 at start of trip.

  As well as the travel insurance, you get 6 free Lounge passes per annum (Dragonpass, eg No1 Traveller etc)

  http://www.barclays.co.uk/TravelPlusPack/TravelPlusPack/P1242609324028

• Geoggy says:

  5 Feb5 February 08:19

  I’ve had 3 claims settled fairly painlessly – just admin and a bit of chasing on one.

  I am however thinking of taking a 6 month break from Amex Plat.

  You can get annual car hire excess insurance that’s well reviewed and recommended on MSE for 40 quid.

  I have all my travel planned and booked for 2016 and have no FHR bookings despite trying for my Dubai trip at Easter.

  My hotel statuses are good for 12 months so there’s no need for me to have the card now and I’d rather spend the 450 quid on something else.

• Patrick says:

  5 Feb5 February 08:29

  I will never use Hertz ever again after a recent rental in Cape Town.

  After clearly telling the rental agent 3 times I did not want Super Cover insurance added as I had it already with the Platinum card she added it anyway and told me it was not added.

  Hertz are refusing to refund me stating that I should not of signed the rental agreement with it on. After a long haul flight you really need to be able to trust the person your dealing with to add only the options you have asked for.

  This only cost me about £30 but as a result of dealing with the customer relations department I will never use Hertz again.

  I have also instructed all my employees never to use hertz again unless absolutely necessary for company travel.

  £30 has now cost Hertz about 400 days of rentals every year.

  • Lady London says:

    5 Feb5 February 13:25

    @Patrick Hertz at Geneva airport (French side) also put their full insurance on my car hire. I had expressly not booked it, and expressly told them I never take it when signing the forms and they had confirmed it was not sold to me.

    When I noticed a higher credit card charge than expected I queried it. I got the same response from Hertz. “It’s your job to check the form”. At 11.30pm after a late tiring flight after work, remembering to reconfirm with the agent that insurance was not required.

    I can’t tell you how many times I haven’t hired from Hertz at Geneva over the years due to that.. it’s a lot. Where my destination could be reached easily from another airport than Geneva too, I’ve also consistently even flown to another airport it left such a bad taste in my mouth.

    To cap it all they tried to give me a car in the dark part of the garage. I insisted on moving it with the agent in attendance to a lighted part of the garage. Then went over it with a fine toothcomb (even though I was not aware that they’d conned me on the insurance at that time). Lucky I did, because the car had what looked like bullet holes through the headlights.

• Dale says:

  5 Feb5 February 08:36

  £103 for alloy wheel damage is remarkably cheap

  • Rob says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:11

    I doubt a 1cm scratch has reduced the car value by £103.

  • Simmo says:

    5 Feb5 February 10:35

    And I doubt they even make the repair!

    • Rob says:

      5 Feb5 February 13:03

      To be fair, if the car was worth £100 less than it wouldn’t matter either way if it was repaired.

      What most people don’t understand about car rentals is that the cars are free to hertz. They don’t pay for them. They buy so many that the effective discount is equal to the depreciation after a year (or whenever they sell them). Some manufacturers even offer guaranteed buy-backs to get the business for the price paid and then sell them via their dealerships as second-hand.

  • Andy says:

    5 Feb5 February 12:30

    Costs £50 inc VAT to repair a scratched alloy (with a mobile service that comes to you), doubt Hertz would get it repaired and just keep on charging numerous times for the same damage. #CashCow

  • Gavin says:

    5 Feb5 February 12:55

    Alloy wheel repair is generally inexpensive unless they are diamond cut or something similarly exotic, £60 or so should get a wheel refurbished.

  • Lady London says:

    5 Feb5 February 13:37

    Hertz has a scale of charges for each type of damage to a car. So, for instance, it’s about £45 for a scratch of 1cm or less on the windscreen, or something like £200 for a bigger one up to x. The same for chips, alloys etc.

    They are quite open with me that they charge the scale charge to the renter who brings the car back with the damage, but they actually fix everything all together in one go when they sell the car off. And yes it’s clear that same damage is charged over and over again to unwary renters.

    Even if you are a Hertz Gold cardholder with a master agreement on file, I also advise you never to leave the site with the car without checking the documentation they hand you. In the US often you won;t get any papers at the desk, you will drive the car away and they’ll print the agreement at the gate. Detroit Hertz printed papers at the exit gate for a rental costing $550 instead of the $189 that had been confirmed at the desk. I kicked up an unholy stink when I noticed on return – referred to the online prebooking and told them I was about to call Hertz support. They made me wait 45 minutes, perhaps they hoped I would give it up due to my flight timing but I had made sure I was in good time for the flight, and they fixed it to the correct amount.

    When Hertz stations at airports try these things (beware France especially the South) I have always got it fixed immediately by calling Hertz UK customer services on the spot. It does help to be a Gold customer. If returning a car at an airport, always leave plenty of time and ensure you hand the vehicle to someone who checks it and signs for it. Just ask them to “close the rental” by doing that. I am sure airport car hire sites rely on people being late for their flights or with no extra time to try some of these tricks.

• CC says:

  5 Feb5 February 08:49

  Would I be covered if renting a sports car?

  Before getting platinum card I used to buy car hire insurance but they restricted cars that cost over a certain amount and that went from 0-60 in under 5 seconds! Even if you take out insurance with hire company the excess can still be over £1000 so I’ve always been put off.

• Simon says:

  5 Feb5 February 08:54

  Is it still the case that I must pay for flights, hotels and car hire with ANY amex card to get the cover via my Platinum. Or do I need to use my actual Platinum card in each case?

  Also, when making a booking with Hertz, is there any way to ask for a more basic hire, so I don’t inadvertently pay for cover twice.

  • Rob says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:12

    Car – doesn’t matter
    Flight / hotel – matters for some stuff and not other stuff

    In a hotel, you could hand over an Amex at check-in and if you are not robbed during your stay pay with something else at the end 🙂

    • Simon says:

      5 Feb5 February 11:18

      Just read the Ts and Cs. Seems that any medical issues are covered no matter how you paid, which is most important for my family.
      But hotel/flight postponements etc, you must have used the Platinum to book.

      So in theory should use my Plat amex and not my BAPP to pay for BA flights…..
      That’s gonna cost be some bonus avios…..

      • Rob says:

        5 Feb5 February 13:00

        No, that is not what it says. Look at the definitions section. You can use any personal Amex-issued Amex card in your name.

• Mark Potts says:

  5 Feb5 February 08:55

  I am very pleased to see the majority of people have no problems with the Amex Platinum insurance, I am sad to say that twice I tried to claim for travel issues, and twice it was rejected, the last one was only £100 for one of the kids to see a doctor and get some tablets on our last holiday. So I am afraid I cancelled my platinum card in disgust and got a refund of my platinum fees which more than covered the medical bill. In their defence the “long” version of the T&Cs (Which of course I did not read!!) do state that the insurance covers dependents unless they are in full time employment, but because she started work a week before we travelled they declined the claim. They lost a customer by being so petty.

• Nick says:

  5 Feb5 February 09:04

  OT Anyone had the displeasure of trying to claim accor points from europcar? I’m still waiting for a hire in October!

  Accor are beyond useless I’ve chilled several times, I’ve filled in forms several times and I’ve emailed them the same information several times. There seems to be a pattern of just ignoring the claim. It’s a small amount of points but it’s the principle of receiving the rightful points due.

  Anyone else had a nitemare claiming from accor for a europcar hire?

  Also don’t forget if you use a private car hire insurance firm you are still liable for the full excess and it’s pre authorised on your card so you need to be able to have the spare credit. My last car hire excess was £2000 which was a joke on a battered 110km focus

  • harry says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:19

    Yes to trying to claim from Europcar, no result so far
    I went through the Europcar claim system online
    I guess I could try through Accor as well

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