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We’re hopefully all about to start travelling again, at least tentatively. That brings back into play the joys of car hire. There are some excellent, decent, fair operators out there. There are also some total cowboys.

If you hire your rental car on a “fully comp” basis, the chances are that you will be overcharged for the insurance element. It’s basically one of the principal ways that rental car companies make their money (hence the inevitable hard sells and warnings from the counter staff, if you’re not fully insured by the rental company).

Without doubt, the better value option is to get separate car hire excess insurance.

The first car hire excess deal

First up, I wrote earlier this week about how it’s included for free with the Amex Platinum. Clearly, if you have this card, you are sorted.

And if you don’t have Amex Plat…

If you don’t, but are looking to hire a car, there’s an excellent deal currently available with Questor insurance. I have used Questor for a couple of years now and they are excellent. The cover is good value (even without the mega-discounts I’m about to flag), and their claims process is straightforward and all online (they require quite a bit of documentation as evidence, but that’s fair enough. I managed to get a claim relating to Goldcar processed which, given that Goldcar are very arguably the least helpful rental car company on the planet, is an excellent sign).

My preference is to sign up to the year-long insurance cover. It’s not expensive, and it means you can just relax each time you hire a car, rather than having to arrange insurance on specific dates, every time. However, clearly if you don’t rent cars often, you should compare prices.

Making a good deal even better

While you should find the standalone quote from Questor pretty good, there’s two ways to heavily reduce it, both via TopCashback.

First up, you can get 13% cashback with Questor:

Next, TopCashback are offering a straightforward 10% Questor promo code, you just need to use EXS2345:

Bear in mind that because this Questor promo code is approved by TopCashback, it will not invalidate your cashback claim.

This post is purely a recommendation, based on my personal experience. Questor have not paid for or sponsored this post in any way. There are plenty of other third party excess insurance companies out there (including the direct options from the rental car companies), and you should do your own homework as to which suits you best.