Effective September 1st, 2017 American Express will be making changes to the following benefits (old and new policies can be seen by clicking the links below). Thanks to Travel With Grant for pointing these out:
Let’s take a look at the actual changes being made.
Car Rental Loss and Damage Insurance Changes
- Coverage will be extended to vehicles rented in Ireland, Israel and Jamaica. Cars rented in Australia, Italty & New Zealand will continue not to be covered.
- Eligible rentals will now include certain types of full sized sport utility vehicles, exotic/expensive cars, full sized vans, trucks, pick-ups and cargo vans.
I think they may have made some mistakes because when you look at the new policies listed on the American Express benefits website, it still lists Ireland, Israel & Jamaica as ineligible countries and also those new eligible rentals are still listed as ineligible.
Purchase Protection Coverage
- Purchase protection coverage will now cover incidents related to Natural Disasters with a maximum per occurrence limit of $500 per incident. Previously natural disasters were not listed.
Our Verdict
They are also making some other minor changes (e.g baggage insurance doesn’t cover prosthetics) but the main change will be the rental coverage in additional countries. American Express provides secondary CDW insurance (Chase provides primary on some premium cards). Most people will still be best off using the Chase Sapphire Reserve card on car rentals if they have it due to the primary insurance and the fact that it earns 3x on all travel purchases (including car rentals). More details on Chase’s policy can be found here.
Hat tip to Travel With Grant.
Also, on SPG biz, are rentals outside the us still excluded from coverage?
These are changes to the automatically-included car rental coverage, right? Not for the premium car rental coverage where you pay an extra $20-$25 per rental?
That’s correct, not sure if those are also having any changes or not but I suspect not.
Worth noting that if you are renting a vehicle overseas, you likely have no coverage from your personal auto policy (check with your agent). This means that there is no major benefit to a “primary” CDW like Chase offers over Amex.
Great point. I don’t know why they don’t cover Australia, NZ, or Italy, and didn’t cover those other countries before. In 2010 I got in an accident in NZ and Mastercard covered it…do Visa/MC not offer rental insurance anymore?
With the exception of Canada. Normally personal Auto policy can be applied to rental car in Canada. In this case, primary CDW is still invaluable.
At the time I visited Canada, using the Chase Sapphire Preferred, with its primary coverage, and knowing the limitation(s) of the coverage was essential. With most card issuers, if you purchase the rental company coverage, the card issuer is off the hook, even if they might’ve been primary.
That is actually for all card issuers. They always ask you to decline the rental company’s damage waiver otherwise the insurance doesn’t apply.
Natural disaster……… Still better to nothing but it is close to nothing…… The chance for any individual to face a natural disaster is around ten to the power of negative six. It still needs to time the chance of being eligible for this purchase protection. The probability of getting covered under that circumstance is negligible, if not zero…..
Because they now cover trucks that could be used for moving, they specifically rule out rentals from moving companies =(
If you rent a pick-up from ordinary car rental agency, how does Amex manage to know your purpose of rental?
Based on the company. U-Hauls, as an example, appear to be excluded.