Well, we don’t think there’s a real need to over-emphasize the importance of a travel insurance which should be common knowledge, but with the proliferation of products out there, it may be worthwhile to go into the contract with your eyes wide open.
Not only are there numerous products ranging from individual/family coverage, destination/region of travel, health/emergency evacuation and the usual flight delays, lost/delayed baggage or trip curtailment, there are also the suite of products covering sports equipment (including add-ons for x-treme sports!) and comprehensive coverage of car rental.
For the purpose of this write-up, we will provide the perspective on insurance coverage on car rentals only.
As the story goes, on the homeward-bound part of our trip DownUnder in 2018 as we were headed to the Perth Airport for our flight home, we pulled over at Mirabooka Caltex station (right next to Mirabooka Shopping Centre) to fuel up so as to return the car with a full tank of fuel. There was a slight drizzle, and the gang was in the car. All of a sudden, without any premonition, there was a loud ‘BANG!’. Aghast, Daddy J who was outside turned to look around (note there is no auto trigger on the fuel nozzles in AU. Seems it is a requirement by law for motorist to control the trigger manually so they don’t set it to auto stop as we do back home, or elsewhere for that matter where there is a latch that clicks when the tank is almost full).
Certainly wasn’t the click or bang from the trigger.ย Thus we were left wondering what had happen!
Pertubed, Daddy rushes over and tells us to lock the doors shut and heads to the front of the car to assess the situation.
We find out subsequently that a yellow Holden had backed into our rental.
The driver gets out and himself seems to be in a state of disbelief he could have erred or missed seeing our stationary car perhaps in the blind spot from where he was.
So what happens in the ensuing minutes was some indistinct chatter where both grownups were seen snapping pix of the ‘damage’ and exchanging contacts.
The long and short of the process was – we had to fill up some forms at the Enterprise desk upon drop off of the vehicle at the airport when we arrived. Instead of what would’ve been a simple, straightforward task of dropping off the keys became about a 30-min administrative chain of completing forms, providing further details, and having to dictate what transpired to the duty manager.
In the end, Enterprise charged a flat AUD$2750 damage liability fee to our pre-registered credit card. *Ouch*
What ensued in the subsequent weeks after we had gotten home to SG was the back and forth correspondence in hopes to recover the monies paid upfront for something which we were at the receiving brunt of ๐
Fortunately though was that we had pre-purchased a comprehensive coverage prior to trip commencement with RentalCover.
Yes there was some hassle getting the docs and forms to and fro – to be fair and on hind side one would need to contend with that with any other insurer anyways. RentalCover however has been really responsive through the entire episode.
After 5 weeks from the start of process, we received a cheque for SGD$1500 (based on our selected coverage). Yes that’s way lower than the sum we were slapped with by Enterprise, but they subsequently returned AUD$2000 charged initially given the estimate for repairs came up to only around AUD$700-isd. And, because of the ongoing claim from Enterprise to the insurer and the final verdict that we were not at ‘fault’, we eventually received the full refund back to our credit card!ย We figured Enterprise had recovered the full damage/repair cost directly from the insurer of the guy who backed into us.
Net, not only did we get a refund on the initial damage liability charged to our card, we ended up with some reimbursement from our insurance coverage as compensation for the inconvenience and perhaps to defray some of Mummy’s shopping spend! ๐
