Rental car excess cover insurance in Australia via Southern Cross?

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billgates

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#160180 27-Dec-2014 11:48

Hi folks,

I will be going on a holiday with wife to Australia in mid January for a week. I am going to rent a car while I am there. I have paid for our airfare tickets in full via my ANZ platinum credit card which provides travel insurance cover for up to 3 months. I was reading the ANZ insurance policy fine print for rental car excess and it provides Rental Vehicle Excess up to NZ$3000. I then read their full policy wording and it states the below which makes their insurance cover for rental vehicle overseas useless.

As part of the hiring arrangement you must take up all comprehensive motor insurance or waivers offered by the rental organisation, whether discretionary or mandatory, against loss or damage to the rental vehicle during the rental period

I looked at the AU rental car companies excess charges and they all seem to $180 or over + car rental fees on top. Southern Cross can provide complete travel insurance for me and wife to AU for a week for NZ$66 and this includes $NZ5000 rental car excess cover. Read their full policy wording and no bs about getting any minimum or maximum cover at all from rental car company. All car rental companies in AU (Australia) provide collision damage waiver anyway (I believe it is a law in AU to provide so).

My question is, if there is an accident with the rental car in Australia due to my fault or another car hitting me etc, I see the rental car company charging my credit card AU$3000 in excess fees (most AU companies charge AU$3000 as per their website) and then I can claim that excess fees back from Southern Cross? Does that sound right? It's saving well over $100 going via SC and I get a overall better medical, theft coverage etc anyway with them over the ANZ platinum cc coverage so overall a win win.

ps - feel free to recommend a good car rental company in Gold Coast and things to visit there!

Do whatever you want to do man.

Flickky

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#1204454 27-Dec-2014 12:01

Unrelated to the car situation, but I went to the teppanyaki place at the bottom of the Q1 building in Surfers the other day and that was pretty good.

billgates

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#1204465 27-Dec-2014 12:27

Thanks. Still looking at getting accommodation. Q1 and QT are on my list of recommended hotels. Japanese food sounds good.

Do whatever you want to do man.

scuwp

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#1204478 27-Dec-2014 13:00

Change insurance provider. Ours covered the rental car excess.

Lazy is such an ugly word, I prefer to call it selective participation

nathan

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#1204505 27-Dec-2014 14:50

i always pay for SCTI rather than the free basic travel insurance of my credit card

billgates

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#1204602 27-Dec-2014 18:49

Bought me SCTI. Seems to tick all the boxes.

Do whatever you want to do man.

3g

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#1204660 27-Dec-2014 22:11

SCTI is the best option. Credit card cover is (as you discovered ) is insufficient, generally in the area of rental excess.

With regards to rental car companies, I travel to the Gold Coast about once a year and have found the big players the best overall deal. The little players are a pain to deal with (generally not being on site at BNE ) with some charging additional fees if you don't take their insurance. The discount codes from AirNZs website for Avis or Budget regularly change so it's worth checking every week leading up to travel. Last time the first booking I had was for AUD $420, then 350, then 290 and finally $270.
Remember that with the big players you don't pay (nor even give them payment details) til pickup. Just remember to cancel the bookings you won't need! 8-)

Another good way to check prices is with this site:

http://www.vroomvroomvroom.com.au

Enjoy your trip.

Nigel H

sir1963

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#1204732 28-Dec-2014 08:26

billgates: Bought me SCTI. Seems to tick all the boxes.

Yeah, be VERY careful, ask BEFORE you get to someplace where you get stuck (car rental off site from the airport)

In Ireland we hired a car. Although my travel insurance was extremely good (corporate coverage) the car hire company went something like this:
If you take out our excess insurance to cover the EU$1500 it will cost eu$100
If you don't take out the insurance we will need to put a hold of EU$1500 on your credit card, it may take up to 7 days to clear after you have returned the car.

I have struck this in Aussie too, just can't remember who as we told them to sod off and went elsewhere (Europcar from memory)

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Batman

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#1204747 28-Dec-2014 09:24

scuwp: Change insurance provider. Ours covered the rental car excess.

what insurance is that?

Goosey

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#1204751 28-Dec-2014 09:41

Great thread... I was wondering the same as I plan a trip next year !

sbiddle

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#1204773 28-Dec-2014 09:54

ANZs insurance through AIG is a good policy except for this single clause. This single clause means that they don't actually offer any rental car cover at all as I've yet to come across a single rental car company anywhere that doesn't offer insurance, so if you fail to take this up they won't cover anything. I've taken up the issue on several occasions with ANZ (including the product manager for cards) who admitted it's a pretty stupid rule and said they would look at reviewing it, but at a bank where profits are a lot more important than customers, I don't see this changing.

johnr

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#1204797 28-Dec-2014 10:28

I always get SCTI even with cc insurance, Never had a claim yet so they must be liking me

Kyanar

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#1204829 28-Dec-2014 11:41

Another thing to watch out for here is that many car rental companies actually bundle the insurance into their prices, so you end up paying for it even when you have your own policy. In those cases, you'll get offered an extra fee (usually about $10 a day) to reduce the excess down to about $100. I believe this is more the smaller players though.

Batman

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#1204928 28-Dec-2014 14:18

johnr: I always get SCTI even with cc insurance, Never had a claim yet so they must be liking me

a wise man once said - you buy insurance so that bad things don't happen. they didn't.

billgates

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#1205494 29-Dec-2014 14:11

Thanks for all the tips folks. I have booked a rental car via Apex which have great reviews through TripAdvisior travel forums for both AU and NZ. Booked QT for the hotel. Got a really good deal via www.booking.com

Will get a Optus SIM card at the Gold Coast airport with the $2/day deal for unlimited AU calling and SMS and 500MB data/day.

Do whatever you want to do man.