With regard to insurance, for an economy, compact and midsized car, you must consider the following:
1. Vehicle licensing cost recovery (VLCR): this is a mandatory surcharge that the government imposes on car rental. you may or may not get the surcharge passed on to you as an additional cost. We are covered when we pay using the HSBC card.
2. Loss Damage Waiver (LDW): This is insurance for the car you rent. We get free LDW using HSBC card, which means, the rental company (Hertz here…) takes from us the responsiblity of any damage to the car we rent. In other countries, like Australia, it’s called Collision Damage Waiver (CDW), which mean you’re not fully covered e.g. in Australia, if anything happens to car, you pay a maximum of A$3300, the rest is covered by company. So we’re covered more in the States than California. For our economy, compact or mid-sized car, it will cost USD9/day. But we got it free.
3. Liability Insurance Supplement (LIS): This covers not the car we rent but any other damage we might create – to public property, another car, another persons property. This is what protects you from being sued your socks off by others in America. It is not covered and is a hidden charge with Hertz. We pay an extra of USD12.95 a day. In the state of California, we are covered up to 30k/accident. By paying supplement called LIS, any liability is covered up to 1Million.
In the end, when we went online to rent the car through Hertz, VLCR and LDW came free. We were advised to opt to spend more on LIS, just in case we get sued, so that’s what we’ll do.
