TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin car rental Insurance

If your using a CC for the collision you have to decline it on the rental contract. Liability is different. CC's don't cover the liability.

that is the real question liability. In regards to collision CDW my credit cards differ if in states or not

. In the us my card are secondary insurance and in a lot of the states the primary usually your own car insurance has to pick up the bill 100% so the credit card actually has no expense ( makes you wonder what benefit they giving you as they know in most cases there exposure is zero unless you have no car and no policy)

out of the country the credit card (vias) will pick up 100% as primary but only if you decline any supplemental ins offered by rental company

my amex if you sign up for premium coverage for apx $20 for the whole rental period i believe up to 45 day will give you primary insurance in the states and in certain countrys but not all f

None of my cards provide liability on a car rental in US or abroad my auto policy provides liability only in the US

I have also found outside of the us all the major rental companies avis hertz alamo ect are not owned by the parent company and are local franchise so any issues you have like tom had may be more difficult to resolve. If i used hertz us web site to book my car it was twice as expensive then if i went to there local st martin web address

So i guess all the rental companies in st martin are really small privately owned companies so its either rent from them or use taxis

hertz told me i have unlimited coverage on both sides thankfully i didn't need to find out and i was happy with the service and they didn't try to scam me with scratches that were on the car when i rented it

Tthat is a great summary of car rental insurance. It should answers all questions posted.

Bear in mind, not all cards cover CDW. Discover Cars for one announced recently they were dropping that coverage. Thanks for your summary.

SXMScuba - I understand your feelings about Hertz and based on those comments in your previous posts and this liability insurance issue, I rented an SUV in November when last there. Good experience. Thanks!

Despite all the insistence of others and having beat this horse to death trying to educate them, I think we've all concluded that Liability Insurance is not offered by any credit card vendors when we rent at SXM, so everyone needs to be getting it as supplemental insurance. OK, fine.

Having said that, if I understand right, the only rental car company in SXM (serving PJIA) that includes Liability Insurance in their base rate is Hertz. Is that right?

There's good and bad in all. One time staying at Divi there was a rash of taillights stolen from the rental cars of only one particular agency. Several people we spoke to said when they returned car they were made to pay for the replacement. Then someone who worked for that company bragged to the wrong party that they were putting the units back in that had been taken. So a ripoff.

Yes, everyone has a favorite. Ours is Kenny's because Leslie is the most honest person we've ever met so we trust him.

That I'm not sure of. All I can say is that I have always been happy with hertz. Price, service and reliable cars.

Well, no one else chimed in to say otherwise, so I'm guessing Hertz is the only rental car company including liability insurance in their base quote then.

Have rented from Tropicana on Billy Folly Rd for 10 of the past 11 years and very happy with their rates and service. Just got off the phone with them asking about liability. Their rates are only $5/day and coverage is $50,000 for both sides of Island.

Is that 5 just for the driver and another 5 for second driver? Hertz throws it in for the spouse too covering both drivers.

THis was an incident posted on Facebook.
"When renting a car in SXM, we always take the rental car liability insurance but decline the Collision Damage Waiver (CDW) insurance since the credit card is supposed to cover that. I always wondered what the experience would be if I had to use the CDW provided by my credit card. Well, it was actually not bad.

Long story short, our tail light was busted in the SXM True Value parking lot. (I parked there and ran to a neighboring business, not sure if that had anything to do with it . I went by the Hertz office and reported it. The Hertz people took pictures and filled out a report.

Eventually, the $205 for repair was billed to my Fidelity Visa card that was used for the rental. After returning home I contacted Hertz and they emailed me all of the info on the incident which I forwarded to the Visa claims department.

In summary I reported the incident on Dec 1, filed the claim on Dec 18 and got reimbursed for the full amount of damage on on Jan 29. All in all, fairly painless. The Hertz and Fidelity Visa people were all good to work with. I have to assume the results would have been the same for a much larger claim as the CDW covers up to the full value of the car."

$5/day for each driver

I cannot believe that third party liability insurance is not included when you rent a car on the island even if you decline any extra or supplemental third party liability coverage - e.g., the $5 per day kind of thing. In both France and the Netherlands, third party liability insurance coverage to an unlimited or very high amount is required to be included in the cost of the rental. No one can rent a car to you in either country without the third party liability insurance coverage in place.

I am pretty confident that the law on the french-side of the island is the same as in France, both because of the way the law works generally and because of the fact that people renting from a french-side car rental business say that they have been told that third party liability coverage is included in an unlimited amount. Plus, this kind of requirement is just what the french do.

I am not so confident on dutch-side, but still believe that there must be a requirement that the cost of rental must include third party liability insurance. I cannot believe that a car rental business in Sint Maarten can rent you a car and there actually is zero third party liability insurance coverage in place. Even if that could occur on dutch-side, I cannot believe that that would be legal on french-side and of course even if you rent from a dutch-side business almost all of us go to french-side.

Am I sure about this, heck no. Do I care enough to consult an island attorney about this, no. We have rented from Michael/Unity for years and have him include the $5 a day for "liability" in his quote. What we really are getting - and whether we really need it, I have no idea.