Will the Chase Sapphire Preferred really cover your car rental?

[Matt]

I’ve skirted around the topic of credit card car rental insurance because I’ve been a bit unsure of it all, and didn’t want to put something out there that was incorrect. But despite that, I tend to take the advice of others, waive the CDW and put the car rental insurance onto a credit card. The ‘best’ card for this seemed to be the Chase Sapphire Preferred because it offers Primary rather than Secondary coverage.

This means that the first payment comes from Chase in a claim, and if the coverage is sufficient then your insurance company never dips its hand in its pocket, and therefore (I think) your premium isn’t hit by the claim. Secondary coverage would mean that the credit card company picks up the bits that your insurance doesn’t cover, so you do (I think) perhaps get a ding for that.

Anyways.. we rented a car and got a flat. I called up the CSP benefits line and explained we were returning tomorrow, but wanted to know what we should do to ‘do it right’.

After giving out all the details of the claim to the rep on the phone they came at me with this zinger:

I’m required to tell you that in the state of New York we will not cover you for any claims of liability for damage to the property of others. I stopped them in their tracks and said ‘we hit a rock/pothole’ there was no liability claim.

The response was that ‘property of others’ means:

A car rented from another.


Yep – apparently in New York, you don’t get Car Rental insurance from Chase. To clarify, that means if you live in New York, and rent anywhere in the US. I was informed that international rentals are ‘of course covered’.

Apparently this also applies to residents of Michigan, Texas, Rhode Island and North Dakota.

Couldn’t find any mention of this clause on the Chase website.. #developing.


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[Mountain Trader]

Matt-

I'm not clear on your facts on the NY rental, but I want to learn more.

Perhaps not relevant here, but a long time ago, New York passed a law re car rental insurance, due to, as I recall, the CDW ripoff market, and also since many NYC residents who rented cars had no everyday car insurance since they did not own cars.

Does someone have a cogent update on current conditions?

 

[PNW-MSSER]

This doesnt work as well as you would think, brother was recently in an accident, although they paid out the claim, they did not pay diminished value for the rental car, dimished value after negotiation came out to around $1.5k (it was a bad accident). So brother had to delve into his insurance to pay it. So his premium rose and so did mine since he is secondary on my car. Not sure if the one offered by rent companies has DV covered.

 

[Matt]

Update 3/13

I called into the Ritz Carlton card to ask them the following questions:

1. Do you provide coverage if I waive CDW?

• Yes

2. Are you sure, because the CSP said that then denied me last night….

• Let me transfer you to benefits.

Ritz Carlton actually transferred me to the CSP benefits team and they asked for my CSP number to pull up my record. The rep I spoke and said I was covered, and the first rep ‘made a mistake’. When I explained that the mistake was somewhat convoluted (citing state law in 5 states) it emerged that there is such a law that applies to Chase cards, but not all Chase cards. I asked for examples and they cited the Freedom card. IE State law kicks in on the Freedom and ‘some other’ Chase cards, but not the CSP.

I’ve reached out to Chase Support via twitter for their ‘vote’ on the topic.

 

[Mountain Trader]

This doesnt work as well as you would think, brother was recently in an accident, although they paid out the claim, they did not pay diminished value for the rental car, dimished value after negotiation came out to around $1.5k (it was a bad accident). So brother had to delve into his insurance to pay it. So his premium rose and so did mine since he is secondary on my car. Not sure if the one offered by rent companies has DV covered.

By "diminished value", do you mean the decline in value a vehicle permanently incurs due to it being in an accident, even if all of the parts damaged in the accident are replaced or repaired? I had heard of that in cases when a car was in a lot of water, but not in others.

I would like to read the language of the cc coverage to see how they wrote around that.

 

[PNW-MSSER]

By "diminished value", do you mean the decline in value a vehicle permanently incurs due to it being in an accident, even if all of the parts damaged in the accident are replaced or repaired? I had heard of that in cases when a car was in a lot of water, but not in others.

I would like to read the language of the cc coverage to see how they wrote around that.

Yeah its that, there is a drop mostly the 1st time the car goes to a body shop, one of my cars was rear ended with minor damage, but we got a 2k DV on the new car. So it really doesnt have to be a lot of damage to claim it.