Hi, hope everyone's good.
Question about separate car rental insurance policies for Canada.
I have an upcoming trip to Canada where I'll be renting a car. In many parts of the world (EU, UK, Aus at least) insurance is included with a large excess. To buy the option to reduce this excess from the rental agency is expensive, so I've always made sure I have have separate rental excess insurance (either through my travel insurance or a separate standalone policy).
However, from what I can tell, in Canada and the USA it works differently - there's no insurance included by default, and you have to pay for the CDW (Collision Damage Waiver) to have any coverage at all via the rental agency. This is probably because most personal auto insurance policies over there include cover for rentals, and many credit cards there include cover as well.
To get the CDW from the rentals I'm looking at is around NZ$1,000. I've tried finding a separate policy that includes CDW (not just excess cover), but haven't found anything.
Is anyone aware of anyone who provides a policy like this? Or do I just need to bite the bullet and pay the rental agency?
Cheers!
(I have found rentalcover.com, which at first glance appears to be what I'm looking for, but the fine print reveals that:
"To be eligible for this protection, you are required to have at least the most basic collision damage waiver (“CDW”, “LDW” or similar basic protection package) offered by the car rental company."
So basically useless, as there's only one tier of CDW available from all the rental agencies I'm looking at, and they all have zero excess if you buy them anyway.
To add to this, their rental guide for Canada specifically says:
"Just say 'no'
If you've bought Collision Damage Waiver and/or Supplemental Liability Insurance with us, you can say 'no' to the hard sell for CDW/LDW or SLI from the rental company."
https://www.rentalcover.com/en/car-rental-insurance-canada
How can I have the most basic CDW from the rental company if I'm told to refuse it?
Unless I'm reading this wrong, rentalcover.com is basically useless for Canada and the USA, and actively guides you to invalidate your policy and be completely uninsured.)