At one time, one of the best perks about having a Visa card was the insurance provided on rental vehicles when paying for the hire with the Visa card. Many years ago, we hired a car in England and experienced a tire blow-out and the coverage we had through the credit card took care of the cost of a new tire. Although some documentation was required, it didn't seem especially onerous nor did we wait an excessively long time for the refund. Fast forward to 2025... Oh, how things have changed! Beware when hiring a car overseas and think twice if you expect that Visa card coverage will easily handle minor vehicle damage. We rented a car from Europcar and presented their clerk with documentation of our U.S. based Chase Bank Visa card rental car protection plan. Despite the documentation, we had a compulsory $5K hold put on our card for the privilege of renting from them. The agent explained that the Visa card perk would not cover things such as tires and other minor damages, so we should take their 'protection plus' coverage to cover "anything" not covered by Visa and that by having such coverage it would take care of "everything" if there was any damage whatsoever to the vehicle. Protection Plus cost Ten Euro per day. We were surprised to find that the car did not pass inspection when we returned it. The agent inspecting the car said that she saw a problem with the rim on one of the wheels and immediately chose to bill us 190 Euro for it. Although we had photos of the car when we picked it up, we didn't have close-up images of every wheel rim (and we were unaware at that time of Europcar's predatory practices). So, we didn't deny that maybe some very minor damage to a rim could have happened while the car was in our care, but pointed out to the agent that we paid for "protection plus" coverage so that even if we were responsible for the damage, there should NOT be any charge for it. The woman said she didn't even know what the company's "Protection Plus" is! (Talk about stupid!). We couldn't reach anyone at Europcar by phone whilst still at the airport, so, we figured that a good way to take care of that would be to contact the benefits department at Chase Bank to put in a claim. That's when we became aquainted with their automated phone system for claims and received information on processing requests. To call the process a pain in the neck would be an understatement. Documents for claims processing by the third party insurer Virginia Surety requires the following: 1) "Statement from your insurance carrier or proof of not other insurance; 2) Rental agency's incident report; 3) Rental agency's 'demand letter'; 4) first and final rental agreements; 5) monthly billing statement showing purchase amount; 6) police report; 7) "primary insurance policy's declarations page; 8) "Repair estimate and itemized repair bill"; 9) Two photographs of the damaged rental car. Such requirements would make sense for a major collision -- but for scuffing on a wheel rim or minor damage to a tire? Who files a police report for THAT! And bear in mind that the documents sent by Chase Bank say that each of the documents listed are REQUIRED to process a claim! Given that we had no response to our email from Europcar and were unable to reach them by phone, we don't have any documents from them to support their claim that we caused damage to the car. Furthermore, we were unaware of damage to the car, so there isn't any accident report nor police report! So, we decided to handle the matter with the bank by entering a dispute with a charge-back to Europcar for the fraudulent 190 Euro charge. There were also other charges by Europcar that we cannot reconcile with the receipts we have. That matter is complicated by the fact that Chase Bank could not provide us details on the costs we incurred in Euros; they can only confirm amounts in U.S. Dollars (yet they are a multi-national bank... go figure!). Dissatisfied with Chase Bank Visa's claims processing system, I called the bank's benefits management department to report the fact that their system is geared to handling major incidents/collisions and NOT very minor damage such as we were being charged for. The agent I spoke with had a good command of English, but not the wit required to fully comprehend my complaint nor my request that a disclaimer be added to their Claim Processing Guidance document to indicate what specifics are needed for those claims, such as a personal narrative, photo and a bill. She was passively rude and inattentive. I had to ask if she was still there on the line and she repeated some script more than once about the 'required' documents. In this rigamarole, I found that tires/rims ARE covered by the Visa perk -- yet they don't make it easy to claim for them.
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JP Morgan Chase Bank, NA, doing business as Chase Bank, is a national bank headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, that constitutes the consumer and commercial banking subsidiary of the US multinational banking and financial services holding company...
