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In a couple of months I will be traveling to Portugal, and I need to rent a car. Since I have a MasterCard Platinum, I can get coverage and save some money by declining CDW and LDW.

From MasterCard's Guide to Benefits:

To Get Coverage:

  • Initiate the transaction under your name and pay for the entire Rental Company’s security deposit using your card and sign the Rental Agreement;
  • Authorized Drivers whose name(s) appear as a driver on the Rental Agreement will also be covered;
  • Pay for the entire rental transaction (tax, gasoline, and airport fees are not considered rental charges) with your card and/or points earned by a Rewards Program associated with your card prior to picking up or immediately upon the return of the Rental Car; and
  • You must Decline any/all partial or full collision damage insurance or similar collision damage and loss damage waiver (CDW/LDW) offered by the Rental Company.

So I went to search the companies I could book a car from, and, so far, Europcar is the cheapest one I found. However I couldn't find a way to decline those insurance fees.

For instance, these are the options on Europcar:

Europcar

As you can see, the first "tier", Basic (that looks pretty much CDW+LDW, although not named that way), is already included and cannot be declined. I would like to know if I there is way I can decline while booking online, or whether it would be better if I rent the car in the airport/company's counter instead of pre-booking it online.

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Guilherme
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2 Answers2

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Unfortunately, this is most likely not possible to decline CDW at Europcar and get a better price. Like discussed this question about protection depending on the booking website, pricing of rental cars is pretty opaque. Depending on your residence country, on the rental company, on the location, and some possible other parameters (like temporary offers), the protections that are included in the base price may change. This does not mean that if the protections change, the price will change (in the linked question, if you book in the UK or in the US, the price is the same, but one has more protection).

In the specific case of Europcar, its FAQ mentions that CDW/LDW is usually included if booking from its UK website (you can search the FAQ for another website):

A UK quote generally includes road tax, third party liability cover, VAT, CDW & TW

So if you want to get the better price without the CDW coverage, you should compare the different rental companies' offers without the CDW. I.e. it does not mean that if Europcar has the best price with CDW for your search, it also has the best price among all offers without CDW.

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Vince
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It really depends on the country, in places like Italy CDW is mandatory so there is now way to decline it. You first have to check the legal requirement for the country where you want to rent, then also call your CC or Mastercard and ask for clarification about their policies.

Herman Toothrot
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