FYI -- Here is my experience after renting in Israel and making a repair claim with the Chase Sapphire Preferred World Mastercard.
Bottom line: Getting the Sapphire Preferred card was well worthwhile, especially after we suffered some accident damage to the car.
But note:
The big savings was not up front on the insurance fees (see #2 below).
It was in avoiding the rental company's CDW high deductible ($600! -- see point "C" in "Lessons learned" below) after we returned the car with some minor body damage.
Since this forum was so helpful to me, I'll share our experience in detail, for those interested. Car rental in general, and especially in Israel, is full of scams, last minute charges, outrageous insurance fees, and more. It's utterly "Buyer Beware." To avoid getting screwed, you have to do a lot of homework, unfortunately.
Here's our experience:
1) We applied for and received a Chase Sapphire Preferred World MasterCard. We also obtained from them a written (email) letter confirming coverage in Israel, which we brought with us to Israel.
2) We confirmed, in advance, from Budget that they would honor the Mastercard coverage, but discovered -- to our chagrin -- that if we waived the $14/day (!) CDW and $5/day Theft Protection, then they would force us to buy "Third Party Liability Insurance ($14/day). So the net savings on insurance was only $5/day. (Lesson learned: Check everything in advance before you depart. And don't be fooled by low rental rates; the fees, insurance and taxes more than doubled our daily rental cost.)
3) We received no hassle from the Budget Rental counter at Ben Gurion airport. They readily accepted the Mastercard coverage, allowed us to refuse the CDW & Theft Protection, but then forced us to buy TP Liability.
4) The rental went fine. But one dark night, while backing up in a dirt parking lot filled with construction material, we nicked the tailight, breaking a lense and scratching the paint on the bumper cover.
5) When we returned the car, they said they would immediately charge us an "estimated cost of repair" -- to make sure we didn't cancel our credit card before they charged us. IN the end, they didn't do that, but 2 weeks later our card was charged for $772 for the tailight, bumper paint repair.
6) We filed a claim through Mastercard's claim service manager, Sedgewick. We had to upload various documents, to Sedgewick's website, which was tedious but uneventful. Getting Budget in Israel to send us an itemized bill required a phone call to Israel.
7) 2 weeks after submitting all the documents, we see that Sedgewick as issued a $666 reimbursement. Presumably, this will soon be posted as a credit to our credit card balance.
Why not the full $772? Because -- in yet one more scam -- Budget charged us $106 for the "assessors report" (i.e. the estimate), which Sedgewick has (so far at least) not reimbursed.
Lessons learned:
A) Don't be fooled by low rental rates. The rental for our car was only $22/day, but all the fees and insurance -- even after refusing CDW -- brought the total to over $45/day! (including extra driver, GPS rental).
B) Rental car companies in general, but Israel in particular, will nickle-and-dime you to death. You really ahve to keep asking questions BEFORE you rent the car, and read all the fine print.
C) The high deductible of Budget's CDW -- not the lower insurance cost -- is what makes the Sapphire Preferred Card so valuable. Though we only saved $5/day on insurance sold by Budget, we saved the $600 deductible that Budget would ahve charged us for the damage. We only learned about this by emailing Budget several times, before we left, to clarify the "fine print."
Budget call's their deductible "NWR" or "Non Waiverable Responsibility", and describe this way:
"The NWR is referred to as the Non Waiverable Responsibility, or "deductible". In the event you purchase the Collision Damage Waiver (CDW), you may be charged up to $600.00 USD."
D) The 40,000 free points when signing up for the Sapphire Preferred Card is redeemable for cash.
We requested, and received, a check for $437 upon our return. ($400 bonus plus $37 = 1% of the $3700 we spent on the card). According to MasterCard, there is no penalty for cancelling the card before 12 months (i.e. before the $95 annual fee kicks in). MasterCard told us "people do that all the time."
Bottom line: A pain, but for a few hours of hassle we saved:
1. $65 on a 13-day rental for rental insurance, by refusing the CDW and Theft
2. $600 on the NWR (deductible with a CDW) for the damage repair
3) $437 -- cash reward for 40K bonus points, plus 1% of $3700
4) $113 saved by avoid the 3% "foreign exchange transaction fee" charged by our other credit cards.
5) minus $37 in cash reward points we lost by not using our Fidelity Signature Visa credit card, which pays 2% in case rewards.
Am I missing anything here?
Approx $1141 savings for perhaps 7 hours of online/telephone work from start to finish. Worth it? You decide.
Topic Wiki
