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About rental car insurance
Most major bank credit cards offer rental car insurance. Chase has been mentioned in previous posts already, so I won’t repeat it here. I’ll just point out that US Bank Altitude also provides primary car insurance. For rental car insurance and related credit cards, see the article below:
This time, my use of the credit card’s rental car insurance was a bit unusual. I used Express Return after hours at the rental car location, and the rental company charged the damage repair fee directly to my card. There was no communication or paperwork at all.
Sometimes, when you return a car and the rental company notices a scratch or damage, they will immediately fill out an accident report form. That can be very time-consuming, but the upside is that they may be able to determine on the spot that you didn’t cause it, and then insurance won’t be involved. For example, once I returned a rented pickup truck and found a scratch on the bumper from scraping against a wall. I firmly said I didn’t cause it and I had no idea about the scratch, and Hertz didn’t pursue it further. The same thing happened with a scratched wheel rim on a Sixt rental.
Rental choice
Both pickup and return were at PDX airport, and the trip was to LD for two days. I chose Hertz for three reasons: pickup was convenient, the car would be better with status (or so I told myself), and the points rebate was better (that was the real reason).
Why was the rebate better? Because Hertz and United are best buddies, UA has long had promotions for renting Hertz through UA that earn miles, as shown below. Since I’m UA Silver, renting for two days earned 2,500 UA points and also counted as one Hertz status qualify rental, which is quite a good deal. A tip: if you want to earn UA points while also using Hertz status benefits, be sure to enter both your UA membership number and your Hertz membership number when renting.
When I picked up the car at PDX, the lot was full of Nissan, Hyundai, and Kia cars. That’s just standard Hertz behavior, so I wasn’t surprised at all and picked a Nissan Altima with lower mileage.
What happened
Calling it an accident is a bit of an overstatement. In reality, a flying stone on the road hit the windshield and made a small chip. It was a rainy morning, and I was driving through a stretch of highway with roadwork on the shoulder. I wasn’t going very fast, around 60 miles per hour, but there was no way to avoid a stone kicked up by the car ahead. With a "bang," it hit the windshield. At the time, I could see the glass turn white where it was struck. The damage wasn’t large, and there were no cracks or anything like that. I reached in from the inside and felt it, thought it was fine, and didn’t stop or worry about it.
Because I had bought a super-cheap ticket, I had to return the car before 5 a.m. the next morning. At that time, Hertz wasn’t open yet and no one was there to handle the return, so I simply wrote the return time, mileage, fuel gauge, return time, and email address on the yellow Hertz envelope given to me when I picked up the car, put the car keys inside, and dropped it into the Express Return box, which looked like this.
I thought that rental companies usually wouldn’t care about a paint chip of that size on the body, so a tiny windshield chip probably wouldn’t be a big deal either. I snapped a photo and left. But three days later, the Hertz charge that was supposed to be only $50 became $350, and I also received an email from Hertz with an Updated E-Return receipt showing a total of $350. If you receive something like this, don’t panic. Since I had paid the full rental cost with a credit card that offers primary rental car insurance, it could be covered. So I immediately contacted Hertz at PDX to ask what happened. It was confirmed that Hertz had replaced the windshield on the car I rented.
Reimbursement process
Pick up the phone in your hand, don’t hesitate, and call the 800-number. The customer service agent will transfer you to the department that handles this kind of card benefit service. A case number and the required documents will be emailed to the address you provide right away. You’ll need to prepare the following documents.
The rental agreement, receipt, and card statement are all easy to get. In my case, the following three had to be requested from the rental company, because I never filled out or signed any paperwork at all — Hertz handled everything.
- Copy of the Demand Letter from the rental company that includes all claimed expenses
- The itemized estimate of repair or the itemized repair bill
- Copy of the police report and/or the auto rental company accident report (s)
My experience proves that asking the rental company for documents is extremely time-consuming and exhausting. PDX Hertz gave no response for a full week, so I had to contact the service supervisor at Hertz corporate. After explaining the situation patiently, the supervisor said they would definitely follow up for me. Sure enough, PDX Hertz sent me an email with an attachment a week later. But it only included a repair bill, not a demand letter or an accident report/damage report. I then had to keep contacting both PDX and Hertz corporate. After going back and forth for many days, they simply could not provide it.
There was also an interesting twist: Hertz proactively gave me a $135 refund. That was because the repair bill only showed a $165 charge, and Hertz had actually overcharged me by $135. After I asked for the repair bill, they had no choice but to refund part of it first. I don’t know whether their slow document handling had something to do with this as well (shady). So if you run into a similar situation, or if the rental company has an extra charge, proactively request supporting documents — you may get an unexpected benefit.
I had already spent more than half a month dealing with the paperwork, and it still wasn’t complete. So I had no choice but to submit everything I had to card benefits again, using the repair bill as the demand letter as well. I also called and explained my situation, and changed the reimbursement amount from $300 to $165. The customer service rep didn’t make any promises and only said it would depend on the circumstances, asking me to wait for a notification.
Result
In the end, I received an email after nearly two months and got $165 in compensation. The whole process took almost three months in total, which was very long.
When renting a car, anything can happen, and there can be all kinds of claim reasons and strange experiences. As long as you have light in your heart and a good card in your hand, your luck won’t be too bad.
There are many holidays at the end of the year, so please drive safely.