<p>My niece is in town for a few days and she rented a car. A slightly bigger car than she is used to driving. Coming around a turn she managed to swipe a post of some sort and now there is a nice gash in the side of the car. Does she need to do anything now (like call the rental car company or her insurance company)? What should she do or expect when she returns the car?</p>
<p>How’s she covered on the rental car? If she declined the rental company’s insurance then likely she’s using her own insurance company to cover her (they typically would cover the rental). Given that, she should contact them. If she purchased the rental car’s insurance then she should contact the rental company. She should remember that if she paid for the car with a credit card, certain credit cards provide rental car coverage as one of the perks so she might want to check into that if she finds herself un or under covered.</p>
<p>Some rental companies check the car carefully when you return it and some don’t as much but regardless she should inform them of the accident and deal with it then. This happens all the time to rental cars so they’ll probably deal with it quite in stride.</p>
<p>It there actual body damage or just paint damage? Once someone in our family had a rental and a car parked next to them must have run their car against the side of the rental. We were able to use a solvent and remove the paint without any trace of an accident. Much cheaper to buy the solvent than pay the rental car company.</p>
<p>I would try to assess the damage to see if it would be worth a claim to the insurance. I had a fender-bender (my fault) out of state that I reported to my insurance. The damage to the rental wasn’t that much over my $500 deductible, but since there was another car involved, I felt better having the insurance handle it. The other driver never made a claim (personal suspicions that he was not a legal resident and DL may have been fake), American Express paid my deductible, and my insurance company failed to renew our policy.</p>
<p>I had a similar experience when I damaged a rental car.</p>
<p>The rental company wanted a copy of the first page of my auto insurance policy and proof what my deductible was. In my case, damage was less than the deductible. I had used a Master Card that covered rental-car damage under a program called Master Assist. My cc company got me in touch with Master Assist. I sent them the relevant pages from my auto insurance policy, and the estimate from the car-rental company, and Master Assist took care of the rest.</p>
<p>This is usually a big puzzle to the driver, because most people don’t repeatedly damage rental cars, but the rental companies, insurance companies, and credit card companies do this all the time. They’ll know how to guide you through it.</p>
<p>We got a flat tire on a rental when overseas. We had turned down the rental co. coverage so we went through our insurance which took a few phone calls but was okay. In some cases, your credit card will include rental-car coverage too (and you might not know about it). We did also inform the rental company by phone. In our case , we had to get the damage dealt with locally and immediately. (There was rim damage as well).</p>
<p>I had a flat tire and rim damage too when a semi swung wide on double left turn lanes, forcing me into the curb. I called and reported it but ended up figuring it would be easier to just pay for a new rim and maybe a tire. When we took it to a tire shop, they just bent the rim back and remounted the tire for $15. Oh, we lost the hubcap too, but a couple of days later, drove by a place selling new and used hubcaps and bought an exact replacement for I think $12. The rental company never contacted us after we returned it, but I sure if they fixed it, it would have cost into the $100’s.</p>
<p>Sadly, I wrecked a rental car. I mean seriously hurt it. </p>
<p>I called the rental company immediately (due to the fact that the car was not driveable.)</p>
<p>They brought me another car. A rep from the rental agency called me the next day.
I answered a few questions and then they told me since I had put it on my AmEx card, that they would be dealing with AmEx to deal with the insurance. </p>
<p>I guess that is one of the “benefits” that AmEx advertises.</p>
<p>I blew out a tire on a Budget rental car in Volcanos Park on Hawaii. I just told the company when I returned the car. They later sent an invoice for the cost, actually less than I have spent per tire for replacement on my own car–about $75. I paid since the amount was below the deductible on my own insurance. If the damage were more expensive, I would have called my insurance company immediately, same as if I hhad damaged my own car.</p>