3 min read
We love insurance as much as the next guy, but sometimes it’s just too much jargon and waffle. We’d love to make it a little easier to understand and our Breakdown cover explained series aims to do just that.
In this guide, we’re focusing on hire car cover.
Hire car cover is often an optional policy benefit to breakdown cover that means if your vehicle can’t be fixed by the end of the working day and you’d like to continue your journey you may hire a car to complete your journey and have the cost of this (up to a certain amount) reimbursed.
Make sure you check your policy before you buy so you know if you have hire car cover included or not, it’s usually part of your onward travel policy benefit. For more info about onward travel, head to our guide for all the details.
You’ll only ever be offered the option of hire car cover if your vehicle has already been recovered to a garage and the work is taking longer than usual to be completely, usually longer than a day, however, this policy benefit only applies when the breakdown occurs over a specific distance from your home, normally 20 to 25 miles, so check your policy details to confirm.
If you need or want to complete your journey whilst your vehicle is being fixed then hiring a car may be the best option for you. Alternatively, you could be offered reimbursements for public transport (this comes under your onward travel benefit) or if you’re not that fussed about completing your journey straight away, alternative accommodation may be offered too. You can find out more about alternative accommodation below.
This entirely depends on how much your policy will reimburse you for the hire car cost. Make sure you check this before you hire the car so you know your budget and exactly how much money you’ll get back after your claim. For example, if the hire car you choose will cost £200 to hire, and your policy covers you for £150, then it will essentially cost you £50, once you receive the reimbursement.
You can then use this as a judgement as to what car to hire. Also, remember that your breakdown cover policy won’t cover break downs in your hire car, that will be offered by the hire car company.
Once you’ve completed your journey with your hire car and are ready to return it, simply drive it back to the car hire company and leave it with them.
Some breakdown cover policies offer reimbursements for travel from the car hire location to your vehicle but again as always, check your policy to see what you’re entitled to in this situation.
Want to learn more about breakdown cover and the different types of policy benefits you could be entitled to? We’ve put together a load of pages to help educate our customers and people looking for great breakdown cover, but who may not understand the ins and outs of insurance, take a look at some of our other “Breakdown Cover Explained” pages:
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