Rental Car Excess Insurance Cover - Westpac Black Card (Zurich)

[AdMEL]

An update:

Avis charge, including excess, appeared on my credit card on June 19, so I had a look at the Zurich website and found the claim form. Was a little concerned when it noted that an actual credit card statement was required (my statement issues about now each month, so a long time to wait!) and also an itemised damage repair quote!

Rang Zurich on Friday June 21 to discuss. I advised that my liability to Avis is to pay the excess - how and whether they repair the car is none of my business! As such, how am I going to get an itemised repair bill? The person I spoke to advised that this was for when the excess is not charged, but a repair cost! I didn't query this at the time, but thinking about it afterwards, the cover is only excess cover! Anyway, I was advised to submit the claim with what I had, including only an internet banking print-out showing the Avis charge. I e-mailed the claim to Zurich that afternoon.

I hadn't heard anything, so I called to check it had been received the following Wednesday. I was advised it had and I would receive a letter (even though I e-mailed the claim!) advising claim number and processing time. I was given the claim number over the phone and advised 5-10 days processing time. No letter has been received! I did receive an e-mail later that day (coincidental?), requesting statement. Upon advising it would not issue until about now, I was advised they would note the claim file accordingly and keep the claim open. They advised claim should be paid within a few days of receiving statement. No mention of amount though.

So far, not too painful.

 

[TheRealTMA]

Interesting. My claims have taken about 5-6 weeks to resolve fully and receive payment so we'll see if they have improved!

FYI - normally one can login to westpac and access the card account then print out a statement or account to date which will show all the info required by the Zurich. Being slightly security concerned, one idea is to print it to a PDF or JPG then edit this and block out the other stuff you don't want them to see apart from payment for the trip airfares and car hire.

 

[AdMEL]

Interesting. My claims have taken about 5-6 weeks to resolve fully and receive payment so we'll see if they have improved!

FYI - normally one can login to westpac and access the card account then print out a statement or account to date which will show all the info required by the Zurich. Being slightly security concerned, one idea is to print it to a PDF or JPG then edit this and block out the other stuff you don't want them to see apart from payment for the trip airfares and car hire.

I would have thought 4-6 weeks. Everything suggests 10 business days is the norm, but it did take Zurich 2 or 3 days from the time I e-mailed the claim to load it onto their system, so more like 15 business days (3 weeks).

Oops, I left out the part about providing a copy of the transactions of my card from internet banking, showing the Avis transaction! I did discuss this with the person I spoke to, who said to submit claim with this and what I had. As I suspected, it wasn't acceptable. The reason for this is that it notes that it is not an official statement and transactions are subject to change (thought they rarely do change).

Don't really need to blank out anything - it only shows the last few digits of the card number anyway! No flights needed - it was domestic excess cover only.

 

[prozac]

Thanks for keeping us informed of process AdMEL. Good suggestion TRTMA.

 

[AdMEL]

Thanks for keeping us informed of process AdMEL. Good suggestion TRTMA.

No worries. As noted in my post above, print-outs of transactions not on a statement are not acceptable.

 

[Alh01]

I certainly had a faster claims payment with Chubb travel insurance - the excess claim was paid within a week of submitting it, albeit with a copy of the CC statement.

One unpleasant surprise was to find that towing charges are excluded from the excess in the T & Cs of the rental car companies we use (Hertz & Europcar mainly), and also excluded from the excess cover of the policy. So when a nasty "miscellaneous charge" of several hundred dollars from the rental car company appeared on my statement a few weeks later, I found myself out of pocket for the full amount. I have yet to find a way to cover these overseas (motoring clubs will often cover them within Australia). Does anyone have a solution for this, other than driving very carefully in remote areas?

 

[AdMEL]

E-mailed relevant page of credit card statement to Zurich on either July 9 or 10 and after Zurich querying why I was claiming ~ $80 less than Avis charged (difference was rental amount!), claim was credited to my bank account yesterday. All up not too painful. Out of pocket $250 for excess. I'll continue to rely on this!

 

[prozac]

That was fairly painless AdMEL.

 

[kpc]

E-mailed relevant page of credit card statement to Zurich on either July 9 or 10 and after Zurich querying why I was claiming ~ $80 less than Avis charged (difference was rental amount!), claim was credited to my bank account yesterday. All up not too painful. Out of pocket $250 for excess. I'll continue to rely on this!

Been following this thread with interest as I too rely on the Zurich Insurance provided by the Westpac credit card (previously Plat Earth and now Earth Black) to cover the ~$2900 excess that Avis have as I don't take up their "extra" insurance. I didn't realise there was a $250 excess for the Zurich insurance cover up $5500...at least I know now and that Zurich do pay up....

 

[AdMEL]

That was fairly painless AdMEL.

Yes, it was! The only annoying part was having to wait for an actual statement to issue. Given they paid a week after I submitted it, not really too much of an issue.

Been following this thread with interest as I too rely on the Zurich Insurance provided by the Westpac credit card (previously Plat Earth and now Earth Black) to cover the ~$2900 excess that Avis have as I don't take up their "extra" insurance. I didn't realise there was a $250 excess for the Zurich insurance cover up $5500...at least I know now and that Zurich do pay up....

$250 excess was introduced about 12 or 18 months ago. Previously, there was no excess for Australian car rental excess cover (there has been an excess on the international car rental excess cover for as long as I can remember).

 

[AdMEL]

An interesting post script I thought I'd share:

At the time I returned the slightly damaged XR6 to Avis at LST, the Avis rep mentioned that if the repair bill was less than the excess, the difference would be refunded. Given the damage didn't affect driveability, I didn't actually think they'd bother repairing the damage, especially given some of the rental cars I've had before!

As it's now been two months and I haven't heard anything, I thought I'd call Avis and see whether they had repaired it and if so, what the damage bill was - as mentioned earlier, I suspected it would be a lot more than the $1,000 excess I paid, but I thought I'd check just in case I was wrong.

Rang Avis LST - no answer. Wasn't quite sure where to try calling next, since they only really ever provide the reservations number, then I spotted a 1800 number on the rental receipt, so I called it. It was the Avis preferred customer service number - spoke to someone after a couple of minutes on hold and after checking the rental agreement number, they transferred me to the claims department. It turns out the damage bill was $2,500! They said they would send invoices for it too (as it turned out, Zurich paid without them, despite their form saying they were required).