My wife and I rented a Dollar car through the CarRentals.com web site for our vacation in Germany.
Prior to leaving for Germany, I called my credit card company (Chase Visa) to verify that my credit card would cover collision damage in Germany, and was assured that it would.
Upon picking up the car, the Dollar agent told us that an American Chase Visa card is not acceptable for LDW - only Canadian Visa cards are acceptable. WTF???!!! My wife carries a Mastercard. We were told U.S. Mastercards are OK, but only with a letter from the card company! Wtf???!!! The agent gave us a copy of the policy. All of this should have revealed at time of booking.
Basically we were told we had to purchase the CDW from Dollar at 201.72 19% VAT - take it or leave it. We had no other choice. Otherwise we're on foot.
None of this was revealed to us by CarRentals.com. It gave us the option to purchase CDW from them, which we declined because we are covered by our credit cards (or so we thought). I consider this negligence on the part of CarRentals.com, and demanded refund of the CDW insurance we were forced to purchase at the counter at exorbitant rates (and is duplicative of the insurance we already had with my Chase Visa card or wife's Mastercard). Or, at least, we could have purchased LDW from a third party at a fraction of the cost had we known in advance.
The predatory pricing almost doubled the cost of the rental. I surmise this is CarRental.com's intent all along - a way to gouge customers of more money by requiring purchase of over-priced LDW, in my case duplicative of coverage I already had.
I calculate the amount of this ripoff to be: 201.72 * 1.19 VAT * 1.3052 exchange rate * 1.03 Visa transaction fee = $322.71.
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