A month or so ago I put my truck into the shop for about 5 days to get painted. I thought about getting a rental car for the week and stopped by Enterprise. I knew that getting the collision damage waiver was a smart idea and I even asked how often damaged is charged to the customer. The agent told me that about 50% of all cars brought back are have damaged charged to the customer, mostly from rock chips. Seems like an extremely high percentage to me and likely abused. If I were to get the waiver on a mid-sized car it’d cost about $15 per day or more. With that in mind I decided to just car pool and use Uber.

Today I just received an email from my bank. I have a credit card through them, being US Bank. The card has a very high percentage rate but I keep it to avoid the $10/mo “maintenance fee”. Their email states that if I pay the full amount of the car rental via the card then I’ll be covered with their auto rental collision damage waiver – for free!

So the next time I go to rent a car, I just need to remember to use my bank’s credit card to pay for it. Then just pay it off before 30-days. For 5 days that’d save me at least $75. I’d rather go spend that on a nice steak dinner with wine for two.