Opinions on SereniTrip: a cheap insurance for car rental abroad

If you wish to use SereniTrip’s services: click here.

For those who are used to renting cars, whether in France or abroad, the question of insurance is always raised. It’s often expensive, headaches and anxiety-provoking.

The principle of franchising

The first time I rented a car from an agency, I had no idea what “franchise” meant.

The principle: in 90% of the cases, your rental automatically includes a first level of insurance covering theft, accidents, damage, … The deductible corresponds to the maximum amount that you will have to pay in case of problem.

As an example, when we rented this summer at Leclerc, the basic deductible was 1,200 €. This means that in the event of an accident, the maximum amount we will have to pay is 1,200 €, even if the car is destroyed.

Rental agencies offer additional insurance policies that allow you to reduce the deductible amount or even cancel it altogether. The problem is that this can be expensive.

Some examples of rates

Our Leclerc rental cost us 6 € per day (+ 8 cents per kilometer). If we wanted to increase the deductible from 1 200 € to 300 €, we had to pay an extra 10 € per day. This more than doubled the price of the rental!

In Spain, we rented a vehicle from Gold Car. We got 44 € for the rental, to which we added 60 € for the total repurchase of the franchise. The price of serenity is more expensive than the price of the rental!

In Iceland, we rented a 4×4 for 2 weeks, the rental cost us 532 € to which we added 420 € of insurance!

As you can see, the cost of insurance is far from neutral and can be quite a budget. If you don’t take it, it’s the insurance (no pun intended ^^) to spend your vacations with the stress of damaging the car and the risk that the renter is very picky to pick up the slightest micro-scratch on the way back. This is very common and that’s why renters usually have very bad opinions on Google or TripAdvisor.

Credit card insurance

Some high-end credit cards such as Visa Premier or American Express (we use American Express Air France Gold) cover car rental. This means that you don’t need to buy back the optional deductibles, the credit card will take over and reimburse you for the amount of the deductible you will have to pay.

However, it isn’t a perfect solution:

The American Express card isn’t accepted everywhere (Leclerc in France for example)
Outside the Euro zone, you will have to pay a commission on the exchange rate, of 2.8% in the case of American Express. For a rental of several hundred euros it starts to cost.

The SereniTrip solution

It was completely by chance that I discovered the SereniTrip service. The funny thing is that it was a couple of tourdumondist who created this service and the husband is a former colleague of Anh! It’s a small world!

Generally, we like very much the services created by former tourdumondists (this is the case of Courrier du Voyageur too) because they are designed by and for travelers

Alice and Alexandre had the idea to create SereniTrip: a simple and cheap insurance that covers your rentals anywhere in the world.

The mechanism is very simple: you pay €5 per day or €69.5 per year and SereniTrip will reimburse you the amount of the excess in case of a problem. No more worries about whether or not to buy back the deductible, no more exchange fees to pay with our American Express, the best!

SereniTrip covers you in all countries of the world with 6 exceptions: North Korea, Sudan, Cuba, Crimea, Iran and Syria.

SereniTrip covers a maximum of 62 days per rental contract. This should be sufficient in most cases.

The CDW / LDW subtlety

That’s why we don’t like insurance: it’s complicated.

CDW (Collision Damage Waiver) either “Collision Insurance” or LDW (Loss and Damage Waiver) or “Comprehensive Insurance” are insurances that are included by default, basic, in most rental agencies around the world

In rare countries, this may not be the case. So there is no limit to the amount you will be charged in case of damage. In these cases, SereniTrip proposes you to take the SereniZen option (60 € extra per year). Otherwise, you will not be covered.

This is a difference from American Express which covers us even if CDW or LDW aren’t included.

(yes, it’s complicated)

The problem of the deposit remains

Whether you are insured by SereniTrip or not, you will be required to make a security deposit when you pick up your vehicle. Outside of France, most rental companies require a credit card for this purpose

Except, in France, credit cards are rare, it is debit cards that we have.

If you aren’t able to present a credit card, the car rental company may refuse to entrust the vehicle to you, unless you take out their infamous overpriced insurances . That’s also why we have a secure American Express card: it’s free and considered a credit card.

So be sure to pay attention to this point before renting abroad, otherwise your SereniTrip insurance will have been useless.

Even in France, you must make sure that you can pay the amount of the deposit with your card (which can exceed 1000 euros). So check that the limit of payment with your credit card isn’t lower than the deposit.

The registration process

The registration form for SereniTrip is very simple, it requires very little information and everything is set up in 5 minutes watch in hand.

An interesting point is that you can decide when the insurance starts, so you don’t risk paying a few days for nothing if you buy in advance.

A certificate of insurance is sent to you immediately, you can present it to rental companies if they require you to take out insurance.

Feedback and opinions

During the inventory of fixtures on the return of our Leclerc rental car after a month of travel, we had the bad surprise to note that the right front rim was degraded (several large scratches). We didn’t even notice it (even if in retrospect I know when it happened).

Of course, the Leclerc employee told me that the rim will have to be replaced, at our expense.

In this case the procedure at Leclerc is as follows:

Immediate invoicing of 35 € of file fees
A few days later: receipt of a repair estimate
The cost of the repair is deducted from the deposit deposited at the beginning of the rental period

So I received a repair estimate of €243.5. Leclerc instantly debited me the corresponding amount (without even waiting for me to validate the estimate, …).

Concerning the Serenitrip insurance, you must file a “claim declaration” on the site as soon as it is established (you have 15 days maximum to do so).

The declaration is quite simple and you will need to provide the following documents:

Copy of the rental contract
Damage report (I have provided a copy of the inventory of fixtures)
Proof of invoice or receipt showing the cost of the repair
Proof of payment for the repair (credit card receipt or statement of account)
Bank details of the bank account on which you wish to be reimbursed

You will not necessarily have all the documents immediately (the estimate may take a long time to arrive) but from the moment you start the claim, you are well within the 15-day period (even if the file is in “draft” on the site).

Once I gathered all the documents, I was able to send the declaration. Everything is done on the site interface which is very well done, I didn’t need to phone, send an e-mail, let alone send supporting documents by post.

Barely 24 hours after sending the claim file, I received an e-mail confirming that I would be reimbursed by the insurance.

Therefore, only the 35 € Leclerc’s file fees remain at my charge. I confess that I did not dig if I could get them reimbursed as well. They were on another invoice than the garage owner’s and I was already quite happy to be reimbursed the 243,5 €. EDIT: After reading this article, Serenitrip told me that I could have been reimbursed the processing fee as well. They offered to open a new claim but I confess that I was lazy to do so. But it’s good to know for another time.

I must admit that I am quite impressed by the fluidity and speed of the declaration and reimbursement process. If all insurances were like that, it would be happiness!

I can therefore only warmly recommend Serenitrip insurance. As we rent vehicles at least 2-3 times a year, we will continue to take out the annual insurance to travel with peace of mind.