Having the best rental car coverage

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While most of the articles in NaturalNews deal with health and the corruption to keep you sick for corporate profits, I read this interesting article that could relate to most everyone that rents a car. It was written by Gregory Karp of NerdWallet and it deals with the fact that your credit card may provide important protections if you get in an accident in a rental car while travelling, but you have to know what coverage you have. Here’s what was said:

“It’s the hard sell at the car rental counter that everyone knows is coming but few know how to handle – rental car coverage.”

While it’s true that your credit card may provide some type of free protection for rental cars, you still have to know what coverage you have and when it applies to your rental.

Loretta Worters of the Insurance Information Institute says that consumers can often be confused about what their credit card does and doesn’t cover, and that’s why it’s important to contact your insurance agent as well as your credit card company before signing the contract.

Many people can reject rental car protection because it duplicates coverage they already have, but that’s usually because their own auto policy applies.

On State Farm’s website they state that for most people traveling for personal reasons, paying extra for coverage from a car rental company is probably a waste of money.

The coverage that most credit cards offer, typically for damage to or theft of the rental car, kicks in after your personal auto insurance pays. But that secondary coverage can be valuable. Perhaps most important, it could reimburse you for your auto insurance deductible, which might be as high as $1,000.

Understanding your credit card’s coverage for rentals is as simple as calling the phone number on the back of your card and asking the issuer. Coverage can vary by card network, such as Visa, MasterCard or American Express; by card issuers, such as banks and even the specific card.

Enterprise Holdings, which owns the Enterprise, National and Alamo rental brands, recommends that customers know, before renting a car, what their credit cards cover and if it transfers to rental vehicle.

It’s well worth a few minutes of investigation. If you can safely decline $20 per day of add-ons at the rental counter because of your credit card, that saves you $280 on rental during a two-week vacation.

So, here’s what to ask your credit card issuer:

Primary or secondary?
Primary coverage is better, but few cards offer it. After an accident, primary coverage pays first, allowing you to bypass your personal auto insurance. That means that you can avoid paying a deductible and potentially seeing your premiums rise. The secondary coverage that most credit cards offer typically means your auto insurer pays the claim but the card will reimburse your deductible and potentially other costs not covered by your personal policy.

Does it apply to my rental?
Typically, you must pay for the rental with the credit card that includes the benefit and you must decline the rental car company’s collision coverage. The driver at the time of the accident must be listed on the rental agreement.

What coverage is included?
Credit card coverage mostly applies to what’s called a collision damage waiver or loss damage waiver, typically the most expensive coverage offered at the rental counter. Cards also usually include some coverage for towing expenses and administrative fees. Many cards also cover loss of use, which means compensating the rental company for time the car is out of service while damage is repaired.

What isn’t covered?
Typically not covered are liability and injury concerns, such as damage to property other than the rental car, people you hurt and related lawsuits. But many people have those coverages elsewhere, according to the Insurance Institute.

What vehicle rentals are excluded?
Credit card coverage usually excludes certain types of vehicles, such as exotic cars as well as motorcycles, trucks and large vans.

How long a rental can I have?
The credit card coverage period is usually limited. For example, Visa generally covers rentals for 15 consecutive days in your country or 31 days outside it.

What about international rentals?
Rentals in some countries may be excluded. For example, Visa and MasterCard coverage excludes rentals in Israel, Jamaica and Ireland. Aside from the excluded countries, the good news is that if your personal auto policy doesn’t cover you outside the United States, your secondary credit card coverage could become primary coverage automatically.

If you have several credit cards that offer rental car coverage, find out which has the superior benefit. That way, you’ll know which card to plunk down the next time you’re at the rental counter.

Aloha!

Hesh Goldstein
When I was a kid, if I were told that I'd be writing a book about diet and nutrition when I was older, let alone having been doing a health related radio show for over 36 years, I would've thought that whoever told me that was out of their mind. Living in Newark, New Jersey, my parents and I consumed anything and everything that had a face or a mother except for dead, rotting, pig bodies, although we did eat bacon (as if all the other decomposing flesh bodies were somehow miraculously clean). Going through high school and college it was no different. In fact, my dietary change did not come until I was in my 30's.

Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.

After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.

Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.

I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.

So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".

Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.

I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.

But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.

The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.

But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.

So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.

Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.

I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.

Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.

A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.

In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.

My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.

I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.

Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.

The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.

Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.

For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.

Namaste!