So, I crashed my rental car…

Europcar will charge your credit card beginning with a 50 Euro Administration fee which no insurance carrier will cover. Open a file with Amex immediately so you can dispute the charges once they come rolling in. It takes a while to sort these things out. The Amex $24.99 auto insurance is worth its weight in gold or should I say Euros. It is worth getting the next time you travel. I speak from experience as my husband backed our Europcar into a wall in Villefranche in May.

Hi Lucky, Glad to hear that you are ok and the damage was only to the car. Personal safety is obviously primary, everything else can be replaced. I have some experience, bit date though. I rented a car from Sixt in Frankfurt in June 1997 and had a minor scrape on the car door in a parking lot in Heidelberg. The car i had was brand new (~10KM) Renault Megane. In those days, what i remember is that the default credit card insurance is secondary. I had an AT&T Universal card if anyone remembers that. Your personal automobile insurance is the primary coverage that you have. I would suggest you comply with rental laws / contract and accordingly report to your US based company if needed. In my case the scrape was deemed very minor and the rental company did not ask me for anything. best

"Call Amex and start the $24.95 insurance today. I did that and it kicked in on the car I had rented the day before." Filing a claim for a loss you incurred before you bought the policy (or filing a claim for a loss that you knew, at the time you bought the policy, that you were going to incur afterwards) is called "fraud." I'm sure it's just as illegal in Germany as it is here.

Poster 62 is right, these replies are all over the map. First call the credit card company you used for the rental, if you're covered follow their instructions. Tell Europcar, see their contract rules. You don't have to tell your own insurance company a darn thing if you won't claim anything through them. If your own policy doesn't cover you in Europe what business is it of theirs. None. It's all economics, sure they'd love to know everything you do 24/7 anywhere on the globe to hike your premium. Unless your insurance company's contract says so, e.g. that you must report any accident anywhere in the world, they have no legal standing outside of their covered, i.e. geographical, policy area. If you work for a company, have a labor contract with them, do you call them every evening, weekend to report to them what you ate for dinner, when you turned on the TV? Get real. Finally, someone else might assist on this, many countries have reciprocal reporting agreements with the U.S. Gov't. and individual states. For example, Virginia and Germany recognize, formally, each others driver license as valid. However, the degree as to sharing information on users varies. It's possible that insurance companies in the U.S. have agreements with the major rental car companies to forward any reports of accidents to them when your U.S. driver license is used. In this day and age of computers everything and anything can be forwarded from any part of the globe. It's not like the 1950s. It's all about economics, money.

beachfan there are a few carriers who cover foreign auto rentals. As a matter of fact you can get kidnap and Ransom, medical evac, foreign personal liability, etc from Chubb and AIG. They insure the rich folks and the big homes.