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Our residence application process has started, albeit earlier than expected due to premature arrival of ITA (no complaint even though our police certificate may not arrive in time).

We expect to spend 1 or 2 trips into NZ to sort out some of the logistics such as job interview, temporary accommodation etc over the next 9-12 months. This means we pay costly CDW premium on the short trips plus the initial period on taking up residence first time as a car is hired.

What do people think about this
Excess Insurance (http://www.insurance4carhire.com/) ? Is it a good deal? What is your way to avoid costly car rental excess?

On a related issue, do you suggest buying your own car immediately after you take up residence? Where do you buy cars from? Our target settlement location is the Bay of Plenty area due to its warmer winter (someone says Hawkes Bay has warmer winter too?)

Thanks for your contribution in advance.

Oriana

[Moorf Junior]

Our Excess Insurance was only an extra few $ ontop of the cost of the rental - we had went with Omega rentals, couldnt fault them :)

http://www.omegarentalcars.com/

[Perksy]

We hired with Apex. Usually we don't do the excess thing but it was certainly alot more reasonable in NZ than most countries so decided to plump for it. So glad we did. We are careful drivers but we passed through a significant amount of roadworks and if you haven't experienced roadworks in NZ it is lots of loose gravel. By the time we reached the other end I am sure we had rather more chips in the paint work than we started out with but didn't have to worry.

[Jon&Candy]

We found that the excess in NZ seems particularly steep. We've recently booked with Holiday Autos in Spain and the USA, and the excess was in the order of £100. In New Zealand it was NZ$2000, so we opted to take out the optional Damage Excess Waiver for £2.50 per day.

[Moorf]

Having rented a car last weekend in Wellington it's quite fresh in my mind!!

We were astounded at the $3000 excess for hire cars - that was pretty much across the board at the desks we went to when we arrived at Welly airport - some were $2700 etc but $3000 on average.

We paid an extra $30 ish dollars a day to get ZERO access and I'm bloomin' glad we did - it was bad enough in the traffic as it was without having to worry about a dent!!

Plus, if you hire a car and find yourself wanting to explore a little you just don't know where you'll end up in NZ - dirt track, ford, mud, sand - worth the extra for peace of mind if you can afford it.

All imho.

Moorf

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Thanks for all who responded.

Moorf Junior, the website you provided says NZ$10 per day extra to reduce the excess down to zero. Is this what you meant "a few dollars above rental cost"?