I often rent a car
with my US credit card which covers me for auto insurance. This is the main
reason I do that versus paying in euros locally. On my recent visit to
Europecar at the Dublin city center location the agent told me that I need to have a letter from the bank proving
my insurance coverage. I responded the
way I always do when rental companies ask this, that it is covered by
my credit card company. This is very common for card companies to do in the US.
It is one of the perks they offer to get people using the cards for rentals.
This time however the agent working at the counter didn't accept that as an
answer. He told me that when I received the confirmation from the booking it
said that I need to bring it. It didn't say anything about insurance proof as you can see by the screenshot here.
 |
| Nothing here about bringing proof of insurance |
He also said it was
in the terms and conditions. If you are interested in searching through the
T&Cs here is the link https://www.europcar.com/terms-and-conditions
I couldn't find any reference to that.
He then told
me, "It's probably because you booked through the US europcar site not the
Irish one." Well no shit dude! Since I booked through a different site, it is a different company, so the information provided is different and enforced as per whoever the agent is.
I had him pull up my rental record and he
could see I rented there numerous times before and when I pointed out that I
had never been asked for that letter before he couldn't answer why. Either way, he
forced me to pay for the insurance even though I didn't need it and could pull
up my credit card benefits website on my phone to show him that it's included
as a benefit. He told me he needed an actual letter from the bank. The most
recent visit I brought in an actual letter from my bank dated and everything,
but the guy didn't like it because it didn't have an actual value amount
covered on the letter.
What I really think
this comes down to is a business practice of intentionally hiding information
so as to charge people more. The majority of the renters are tourists and by
not clearly providing this information but making it a policy they can then say
at the day of picking up the car it's needed and "well, it is there buried
in the terms and conditions somewhere, so now you have to pay if you want a car
for the rest of your vacation." What can a tourist do? They already have
reservations, a route planned out for driving around the country, and because
of a car company wanting to weasel people out of a little more money they have
to pay for it.
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