Insurance on rental gear worth it?

[knotwindy]

You are making a bet with the insurance company. They are betting you will be fine. You are betting there will be a problem and hoping they win the bet.

[bay surfer]

Most Credit Cards have Rental insurance included in the perks. Check with your Credit Card company, to find out the limits. Kind of like CDL your card may have better coverage.

[badgb21]

I also agree with these points below.
For relatively minor items, insurance for careful ownwers/users makes little sense.
I guess we all have our threshold on 'minor'.

Insurance companies do make it labourious to claim, I assume they have their reasons.
I witnessed this recently with a rental car insurance claim - though I didn't mind some inconvenience for a £300 claim - for a dent I didn't do!

Car rental companies scamming customers who don't take their insurance is for another thread!

I do take TP kitesurfing insurance for exactly: protecting against 'life changing losses'.

I took the the VDWS insurance for TP cover, it just happens to be competitive and have rental cover as well.
I've never claimed and hope I never will! So can't comment on their claims proceedure.

The purpose of insurance is not to come out ahead dollar wise. It is to protect against life changing losses. You actually WANT to lose money on insurance. Meaning, you have insurance on your car (for liability mostly), house or life but don't want to claim house, car or life insurance...so you pay the premiums but are happy to not use the insurance. It is a way of spreading catastrophic risk among many people.

If you damage rental equipment (or lose your phone for example), that is just the cost of kiting and you lose the money. Insuring these "little" things to try and come out ahead does not make any sense as the odds are the insurance company will come out ahead...they have to make a profit to exist.

I agree with this approach.

The other aspect of insurance that most people fail to recognize is that the "cost" of insurance is more than just the premium. The "cost" includes both the premium AND your time, energy and expense required to make the insurance company honor its contract in the event of a loss. Often, it's more cost effective simply to pay for a loss out of pocket than to haggle and battle with an insurance company to settle a claim.