Oops, I Busted the Rental Car: Claiming Insurance With a Credit Card

My bad! Or maybe not, but according to Sixt rent a car in Dublin, I damaged their 2017 Toyota Yaris while it was in my possession for 7 days, but it’s okay because before leaving I had done my homework and knew just how to tap into the benefits of my second best travel companion after Heather: My credit card.

After booking our trip to Dublin, I knew that we’d be renting a car and driving it on the wrong side of two way roads that can hardly even fit one car; therefore, I thoroughly researched the rental vehicle collision damage waiver coverage that’s offered by my bank. Most credit cards offer this benefit with varying levels of coverage and different terms and conditions. If you're unsure whether you're covered, you can start by looking here, but it usually pays to double check your specific product offering. In my case, $75,000 worth of vehicle coverage is offered free of charge which is way more than enough to cover our Yaris. Good start.

The trick here was following the rules set forth by the bank and getting all of the documents together and submitted in a timely manner. I've included a list of what I submitted at the end of this post if you’re interested. When I called, my bank informed me that in order to have a claim approved, I needed to decline all coverage offered by the rental agency and prove that the entire rental was charged to the card. Easy enough. Then, If an incident occurred (which it had), I'd be given 60 days from the incident to notify them of the damage, 100 days to complete the initial claim form, and 365 days to submit all required documents. Initial call to check took me about 6 weeks, but to prove it worked, here’s the money shot:

So now for the fun part. What happened? To be honest, I have no idea. I’m not even sure if anything at all happened, but maybe a stick scratched the tire. Please feel free to hypothesize in the comments section. For your amusement, here’s what they sent me, but not before four phone calls with overly friendly call center agents who clearly loved the company they worked for and six emails that went unanswered. I think they knew I get too much email and figured they'd save me the trouble of another one. After I politely reminded Sixt that even though they are bigger, richer, and more powerful than me, small claims court is still a real court, they sent me this:

                               

Subjectively, I noticed when turning the car in that most of the others around me were being written up for one thing or another that I couldn’t see, but maybe that's because I'm over due for a vision checkup. As a side note this company currently has 1.9 stars on Google and 1.5 Stars on Yelp, and some of the reviews are quite a bit more colorful and entertaining than this boring blog post. Feel free to check them out. In the end, no one was hurt (except for maybe the stick...) and I got my money back, so...oh well I guess.

Here’s what I ended up submitting for my credit card insurance claim, ranked from easiest to hardest to get:

1. Copy of monthly billing statement to verify that the entire rental transaction was charged to the credit card - Easy


2. Copy of the initial rental agreement - Easy


3. Copy of monthly billing statement to verify that the damage was charged to the credit card - Easy


4. Damage report from rental agency - Medium (in my case I received this when I checked in the vehicle)


5. A picture of the damage. I only used the one Sixt sent me - Medium (I recommend you take your own if this happens to you)


6. Itemized estimate of the repair from rental agency - Difficult


7. Copy of the final rental agreement - Difficult