Just hired a Car through Hertz for next weeks hol, Picking up from Malaga airport.

Now the car comes with

Collision Damage Waiver is an optional* service which, if accepted, reduces your financial liability for damage to the Hertz vehicle, its parts and accessories, except for theft, attempted theft or vandalism, provided the vehicle is used in accordance with the terms and conditions of the rental agreement.

Although you can "upgrade" to Super cover… which i'm sure they try and sell you when you pick it up.

Now what's the score with it? Hired Cars before and always bought the sales pitch when picking it up and paying an extra £50 or so.

Is it worth it or if you total the car are you screwed which ever way you look at it?

Is this the thing were you pay an extra tenner a day so that if you bring it back with damage they don't take £500 off your card?

If it's that, I've always taken it in the past, figuring that even of something happens that's not my fault I could still get stung for it.

However my colleague recently told me that they take out an annual policy for something like £40 that insures against having to pay any insurance excesses, so as long as you've got it for more than 4 days in a year it's cheaper. Might be worth googling?

Yea that's basically it, kinda try and scare you into shelling out more money.

We did once (i wasn't driving) roll a hire car in Fuerteventura on the north track (dodgy surf spot road,gravel dirt track big holes etc) avoiding a local drunk, made a bit of a mess of the car and boards on the roof. 🙄
Tried to make us pay in full for the car! british consolt sorted it out and i think mates travel insurance coughed up for the repairs to a very bent Astra!
Never forget the hire places face when we took it back 😯 Funny now but a bit scary at the time 😆

I always take it out just incase, but i do think i've heard some where its not worth the paper its written on

Some stuff about it further down this page.

standard Hire car excess is often around €800 also damage to wheels and roof etc etc are often excluded – as well as annual policies you can get short term policies from 3rd parties for around £15/week which reduce the excess a lot and cover some other stuff though you need to document your claim and its another hoop to jump thru- no experience of claiming though friends saved £600 at Easter after a truck scraped off side of car and they reclaimed the excess

You really are better taking out a separate policy
Car hire insurance

I've got the insurance4carhire annual policy referred to by reallyoldgit and greatape above, which we use for trips to the states. Can be a bit of hassle getting it accepted sometimes, but haven't been turned down with it yet. Saves shedloads of money.
It might be difficult to explain it in a carhire place if the assistant's English isn't too good though..

We hired a car once in Menorca. My stomach dropped when they showed us the clio and I asked if they had anything else but unfortunately not. Obviously since it was french about 7 things went wrong with it while I was driving it the most concerning of which was a big piece of metal fell out of the engine. I tried to fit it back in but it appeared to have no use nor ornamaent and after some fiddling around I gave up and put it in the boot.

On return to the hire car company I expected to be stung massively for it through the insurance but felt the best thing to do was own up immediately, I was just driving along after all.

I took the rep to the car, opened the boot and showed him the crankshaft or whatever it was. He took one look at it, shrugged his shoulders and said 'It's French', and that was the end of the matter.

I'm not sure if this helps you or not.