Hi all-
We are preparing to book our campervan rental for 12 days in the South Island. (We leave in 19 days!) We are wondering whether we need to buy the excess insurance ($38 NZD a day) to eliminate the potential payment of the first $5,000 NZD in the event of damage to the campervan. Our instinct is to just risk it and hope there is no damage, but we're hoping to hear from others whether it is wise to just pay for the excess insurance up front.

Thanks so much for any information you can provide!

Melissa

Call your insurance company, explain the situation and ask if you need additional coverage, Your own car insurance company might cover any damage you might incur.

I would pay the excess for piece of mind, something that's good to have while on vacation. Even if your own car insurance will cover you, it will still be a major pain to get your money back. I rented a minivan in Australia a few years that got sideswiped by a hit and run drunk - a few thousand dollars damage. Fortunately I had paid the excess and it only cost me $100 out of pocket. Things can happen.

Yup. I would. There is a reason the tourist parts of NZ have arrows on the road to remind drivers which side of the road they should be driving on!

Thanks for all the advice! We did some research and our credit card doesn't include excess insurance for campervans, and neither does our car insurance, so based on your advice, we'll get the excess for peace of mind!

Thanks again!

MelissaBella –

This may not apply to campervans or your particular credit card, but the following is what I recently discovered about renting cars in NZ (we’ve booked a car rental for next month).

The only vehicle insurance we have is theft coverage on one of our cars here in Indonesia. When we rent in the US, we always waive all the offered insurance, and rely wholly on our platinum Mastercard, which covers car rentals for up to 30 days (our Mastercard is through a US bank, as we're American).

However, Mastercard doesn’t cover vehicles in Australia or NZ unless you decline ALL offered insurance, including the CDW included in the rental price. Unfortunately, it appears that NZ has a law that the CDW MUST be included, therefore we can’t decline it, and can’t rely on our Mastercard Auto Assist for any coverage.

In the past, we’ve declined the additional insurance options, realizing that if something happened, we’d be responsible for the excess. Well, with the weak US dollar, that excess is looking rather scary.

So, instead of going through Nova for our rental car, as we have every other time we’ve rented, we really shopped around, looking for the best deal AND the lowest excess on newer cars. We’re leery of renting a 6-7 year old car though a smaller company, even though the excess is typically very low, so we finally booked with Budget. We’re paying a tad more for the rental than we would with Nova, but Budget’s excess is only NZ$1,500, compared to Nova’s NZ$2,867. We still plan to waive any additional coverage, knowing that if there’s a problem, we’ll be responsible for up to NZ$1,500.

I realize this may not work for everyone, and the excess is much more with a campervan, but you might consider shopping around a bit before you commit.

On the other hand, paying NZ $456 ($38 x 12) upfront is a whole lot better than paying NZ $5,000, and yes, peace of mind is a huge factor.

Last time we visited NZ, our travel insurance included any excess on the hire vehicle in the event of an accident.