Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Zipcar Comes Clean about Insurance


While I'm congratulating Zipcar, I should acknowledge that they have finally updated the explanation on their website about how their insurance works. It's light-years ahead of their previously misleading description, which I commented on earlier.

They've even included a convenient state by state summary of minimum required liability coverage limits which you can see here. However, the website is still silent about whether the coverage includes uninsured motorist coverage or not.

As I've said before, while I don't think that state minimum liability is the coverage most people would want to have when they're driving, as long as they don't mislead prospective customers and members, the insurance coverage Zipcar offers is their decision.

Now that carsharing is growing up, hopefully the carsharing companies will be able to develop some creative insurance options. For example, I've always thought that a nice revenue stream could be developed if members could choose the level of insurance coverage they want - e.g, regular membership is $50/year and you could get $300,000 insurance coverage for $100/year membership.

A link to Zipcar's improved insurance description can be found here.