Sophie Ho, special to wtop.com
WASHINGTON– With summer in full swing, for some tourists it might be a natural decision to rent a car for their travels. But the decision to purchase complementary rental car insurance is a little trickier.
CardHub has released its annual study analyzing the rental car insurance offered by the four major card networks — MasterCard, American Express, Visa and Discover.
American Express came out on top in the study for its policy, followed by Discover, MasterCard and Visa. Though each network provides some form of policy, only MasterCard does not offer coverage on all of its cards.
All four networks require the traveler to charge on the credit card and reject the insurance policy that may be offered by the rental company. The networks don’t cover exotic and expensive cars, trucks, vehicles with open beds or off-road vehicles.
To conduct its study, CardHub looked at a number of factors, including insurance eligibility, policy exclusions, ease of access to information about the policy and the network’s transparency regarding the policies.
Visa apparently declined to clarify issues regarding its policies, and came in last despite having topped the CardHub list two years ago.
To see the full study, visit CardHub’s website.
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