When I was in college, I went on a fraternity “business” trip with a couple of fraternity brothers and we needed to rent a car. We knew we were going to get some hefty fees because none of us were 25 years old yet. I don’t blame them for not really wanting to rent to us. But, once we stepped up to the rental counter and we selected the cheapest car on the lot, they began talking insurance. Insurance? What 21 year old knows a lick about car insurance, let alone car RENTAL insurance? The agent started talking fast, then double talk, then Korean I think. Next thing I knew, we just rented the cheapest car produced in North America for about $95/day. Yes, we fell for it and bought the insurance. While we were supposed to have a safe feeling after purchasing all that coverage, we instead felt like a freshman girl with her senior date on prom night…totally taken advantage of.
This week when I was preparing for a trip where I need to rent a car, this horrific memory came rushing into my head. Scanning the prices of the rental cars on the internet, I selected the car class I wanted and nervously clicked to the next page…the page of horrors. Looking at all the extras, insurance, waivers, fees, surcharges, I was almost surprised some of the options weren’t: steering wheel, $9/day; tires, $4/day; doors, $7/day; $3/day surcharge for the privilege of renting the car (oh wait that one was on there). To give you an idea of what I was staring at, here were some of the options I encountered:
Greenhouse Gas Emissions, $1.25/Rental
Collision Damage Waiver, $22.99/day
National Protection Plus, $34.99
Carefree personal protection, $7.99
Supplemental Liability Insurance, $10.99
Customer Facility Charge (mandatory fee), $1.00/day
Concession Recovery Fee 8.11%
Rental Motor Vehicle Surcharge, $3/day
Vehicle Registration Fee/weight tax, $1.05
The extra add on that won the “absolutely outrageous award” was the National Protection Plus coverage at $34.99/day. Really? Insurance coverage for a car at 34.99/day? What the car rental companies don’t want you to do is grow a brain and actually calculate how much this insurance coverage would cost you over the year’s time, exactly how you pay for your own personal car insurance. Sit back and ponder what you pay for insurance for your own car for the entire year. Is it $12,771? Yeah, I didn’t think so, but that’s the cost of the car rental agency’s insurance premium calculated over the entire year. At that insurance rate, you could just buy a new car ever year and crash it at the end of 365 days.
So, did I really need rental insurance for the car? No. But, it is different for everyone, depending on your own coverage for your vehicle and the credit card you use to rent the car. Many personal car insurance plans will cover you in case of an accident with a rental and many credit cards will also cover car rental problems. Basically, if you take ten minutes to read your personal policy or call your agent, you will know whether you need to pay off these car rental pirates or call in the snipers.
In the end, I rented my car without paying for any these extras, except for the fees and surcharges they forced me to take at gunpoint. What about the global warming fee you may ask? No way was I paying for that thing. Why would I trust the car rental agency with my donation to save the world when they tried to sell me an insurance policy that cost 12,771/year?
To sum it up, car rental companies and all their extras get a Spork Rating of:
Buyer Beware!
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To celebrate something that you are really thankful of, one of the common things to do is to pray and be thankful for the blessings that you have received and throwing up a party would be one of the ways to show how thankful you are and how you want to share it with others.
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