Renting a car after an accident

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:  Hello, this is Robert Mansour, and I wanted to make a brief video today about renting a car after your car accident.  Let's say you get into a car accident.  You have several options. You can rent a car and have your insurance company pay for the rental if your insurance company provides you with rental car insurance.  Now, don't assume that insurance pays for that.  You've got to call them first and go through them.

I would also recommend against going and renting a car first, and then expecting your insurance company to repay you later.  Here's the deal, you go and you rent a car for $35 a day, $40 a day, $50 a day, and then you turn in the bill.  Then your insurance company says, "Well, we only pay for $25 a day.  And we only pay for a certain number of days, and you've exceeded that. Therefore, you're on the hook for the rest."  So, be careful. You can also have the responsible party's insurance company rent you a car.  I would do the same thing.  Go through them.  Most of these insurance companies have arrangements with the rental car companies at a prorated, or a discounted rate, I should say. 

You usually want to go through the insurance company, have them arrange for the rental car directly or have the rental car company arrange directly with the insurance company.  Do not pay out of your pocket. Also, be very careful.  If you rent a car that's too expensive, the insurance company may give you a hard time about that.  Also, if you rent a car for too long, without any substantiation, they also may have a hard time with that. I recently had a case where my client's repair was taking a very long time.  There was a lot of parts that needed to be ordered, and the repair shop had to keep calling the insurance company to explain to them why they are running into problems.  So, the insurance company agreed to keep extending the rental.

Rental car issues can be very, very thorny.  The biggest problems I see is when clients rent the vehicle for far too long, rent it on their own without informing the insurance company, and expecting to just simply be repaid, or renting a car that is too expensive.  Anything that is over $25-$30 a day, you're going to run into a problem with the insurance company.  They generally don't want to pay more than that, which is why I recommend going directly to the insurance company and having them arrange for the rental.  That way it's between the insurance company and the rental car company and not you.  You're just there to pick up the keys and turn in the keys. I hope this helps you with the rental car issue, and if you have any questions about this, please feel free to contact my office.  Thank you very much.

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