Customers strong-armed into rental car insurance they didn’t want or need
Don’t be pressured into rental car insurance; most already have coverage
Don’t be pressured into rental car insurance; most already have coverage
Don’t be pressured into rental car insurance; most already have coverage
Reserving a rental car requires sorting through myriad pages of extra options and insurance coverages. These add-ons are big money-makers for car rental companies, so they try to entice as many customers as possible to sign up.
But several customers of one of the nation's largest rental companies — Hertz — say counter agents they dealt with strong-armed them into buying insurance they did not want or need. In one instance, a customer says he was told he could not pick up the car he had reserved if he didn't buy the insurance.
It's a good reminder that insurance protection from car rental companies is optional, and most people already have some coverage through either their own insurance or a credit card.
Orlando is supposed to be the happiest place on Earth, but Carl Anderson doesn't feel that way right now. Like a lot of New Englanders, he and his extended family visited Florida this spring.
To get around, they rented two cars from Thrifty, which is owned by Hertz. The price was supposed to be $331 per car, but when they got to the rental counter at the Orlando airport, they were hit with an unexpected expense.
"When we got to the airport, they told us that liability insurance in the vehicles was required," Anderson said. "We argued. They ended up telling us that unless we signed, we wouldn't be able to pick up the vehicles."
That liability insurance supplement — listed on their receipt as "LIS" — added $15 per day to the rental charge, clocking in at $111 extra per car. The family questioned it, since they already have their own car insurance to cover their liability, but ultimately, they signed the agreement because they needed the cars.
"It makes me feel like I was taken advantage of. It's fraudulent," he said. "They lied right to our faces."
Kathy Johnston has a similar story from another division of Hertz, Dollar Car Rental.
She and her husband Louis came to New England to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary this April. They were picking up their rental car at Logan when she says they were pressured to buy Dollar's insurance coverage for the car itself. It's called Loss Damage Waiver, and it added $35 per day to the cost of her rental, a total of $244.
"Renting a vehicle is not something we do every day, you know, so it's not something I am well-versed in," Johnston said.
In addition to having her own car insurance, Johnston had purchased a policy ahead of time from the travel insurance company Allianz specifically to cover any damage to the rental. But she says the Dollar counter agent told her the policy wasn't valid in Massachusetts, even though he never looked at it.
"I think I was misled," she said. "Our plane had been delayed. We were exhausted. We still had two hours ahead of us to travel, and so we didn't want to take a chance."
After being steered wrong, both customers tried contacting customer service, a task in itself, to get the charges reversed. Both were told it was too late.
"When you go to complain on the website, you can't even talk to a real person. They take five days to respond, and they don't help you," Anderson said. "What they came back and said in our initial outreach to them was, 'You signed the agreement. This is what you agreed to.'"
Insurance sold by rental companies is optional. Most people have coverage from their own car insurance for liability and many credit cards — especially those geared toward travel — offer coverage for damage to a rental car if you use that card to pay for the rental. But as these customers learned, the time to fight that is before signing the rental agreement.
"I think they're trying to quote you a lower price and take in almost double," Anderson said. "I don't think it's right."
In a statement, Hertz said customer satisfaction is their top priority, and they deeply regret these customers' experiences.
"While employees are trained to provide information about our value-added services, our vehicle protection plans are optional and never required," the statement read. "We have apologized to the customers, issued a refund for these charges and will reinforce our policies with location staff."