Most people who are reading this have most likely rented a car at some point in their lives, so you know what to expect. In most cases, you have made a reservation and negotiated the price, the length of time you are going to keep the rental, and what type of car you want before you enter a rental car location. They take a copy of your license and then ask for a refundable deposit that they place on your credit or debit card, a charge that is supposed to be removed after you return the car. They offer you extra insurance in case there’s an accident, or something happens to the car when you weren’t watching. It could be a scratch or a dent from somebody too drunk to drive a shopping cart through a Walmart parking lot. Or a crease from a foul ball or an errant golf ball that came flying off a nearby golf course. Maybe some kids ran across the roof landing on the engine hood, leaving large impressions from the bottom of their sneakers. These are all reasons to consider taking the extra insurance. It normally costs about twenty dollars a day. If you don’t take the extra insurance, your own insurance company will cover extensive damage, but you will be caught paying the deductible. Depending on how long you are going to rent the car, where you will be driving, and the cost of your deductible should all factor into your decision on whether to take the extra insurance. My advice, for whatever it’s worth, is to take the extra insurance, especially if you are planning on driving through a city or cities and are not going to keep the car for more than a couple of days. Whatever you decide about insurance, here is the main thing you need to keep in mind when renting a vehicle. Once you finish the paperwork and hand over your credit card for deposit, they bring out the rental car. A person with a clipboard accompanies you and together you inspect the car for any damage. No matter what condition the car is in, take your phone out and start taking pictures. Take pictures of everything, like little scratches and dings that you find. Take pictures of the tires, the windows, the windshield, the windshield wipers. Take enough pictures to embarrass yourself and make the rental associate feel uncomfortable. You do this to cover yourself in case the associate missed or forgot to write about some existing damage on their clipboard. I had a problem with a rental car company that accused me of damage to the car that was there before I drove it off the lot. I thought the girl with the clipboard wrote it down, but she did not. The first thing they did was grab my deposit, and then in a month or so I received this ridiculously inflated bill to fix a small dent on a quarter panel that I did not cause. This was back in the eighties, back in the dark times before the advent of the cell phone with great cameras, so I neglected to take pictures with my Polaroid that was stuffed somewhere in my luggage. Now I don’t have an excuse for not taking pictures because, like most everyone else, I have my cellphone on me somewhere. Take the pictures. Under most circumstances go for the extra twenty dollars to cover yourself in case something happens. If you rent cars often, the odds are something will happen eventually. Be careful out there.
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