"What did you do to the car" my friend laughed on video. I really could not laugh. I just gave a weak smile and said I was glad I had AXA Full Coverage or I would be broke. In the middle of June I booked a car on QEEQ. I picked it up around June 20 in Taito, Japan in the morning. The rental company was CRQ CarRent. They gave me a Toyota same group car with automatic gear and it was a nice size. I clicked AXA Full Coverage when I booked because I wanted to feel safe. I am a young guy and it was my first time driving alone in Japan so I was a bit nervous. The first days went fine. I followed the GPS very slowly and was afraid to hit anyone. Then one day near Tokyo city area I tried to park the car in a narrow parking space. I did not control the angle well. I heard a scraping sound on the side. In that moment my whole body froze. I got out and saw a clear scratch on the door side. My first thought was how much money I would have to pay. When I returned the car it was around July 7 at noon. I told the counter staff what happened. The car rental staff stayed calm. He checked the car with a board took photos and asked me to sign some papers. I did not really understand their process. I just kept asking if I needed to pay on the spot. He said they would charge later. I started to count the money in my head. The number 130000 JPY stayed in my mind. My heart felt very heavy. A few days later I saw a real charge on my account. It was taken in euro and the amount looked big. I opened the bill and everything was in Italian. I could not read even the first line. I used a translate app word by word and saw something like to be accounted. This made me more worried. I was not sure if the charge was final or still pending. I contacted their customer service right away and told them the story. I used very simple English. I kept saying car damage 130000 JPY and bill in Italian. I also explained it was a rental in Japan. The person listened and sounded calm. They said they could help me make a claim and asked me to send the bill and other files. At that moment I felt a bit safer because I remembered I bought AXA Full Coverage and this was like my only lifeline. In the next days my feelings were quite mixed. I was waiting and also afraid the claim would be rejected. They reminded me to check if the bank charge was already posted and asked me to send all the bills I could find. I looked at that Italian bill and felt a bit helpless. I kept thinking I only wanted to rent a car but now I was stuck with a document that felt like a foreign language exam. They later told me the car rental company said they needed some time to make a detailed repair invoice and it might take one or two weeks. When I heard that I felt annoyed but I also understood because the car had to go to the workshop. I felt like my life was put on pause. I could not do anything except wait for news. Every time I checked my email or messages and saw something from them my heart would jump. One day I finally got the message that the insurance side had agreed to pay my claim. When I read that line I really felt I could breathe again. It was like a big stone was taken off my chest. That big charge was no longer just a cold number. It became money that would soon come back to my account. During this whole time I felt a clear difference. At the car rental counter it was all standard process. The staff did not talk much. They just followed rules. When I talked to their customer service I felt something else. Someone listened to me complain a bit and then told me step by step what might happen next. I did not see what they did in the background. What I felt was that someone helped me connect all the parts I did not understand like the foreign bill the car rental company and the insurance. In the end it turned into a real payout to my card. Now when I think back if I did not buy AXA Full Coverage I would probably hate this whole rental experience and maybe never dare to drive abroad again. For a student like me 130000 JPY and the euro amount is not small. I almost thought I would have to cut all my summer plans to pay for this. When the claim was paid I really felt lucky that I clicked that option. After this story when I talk with my friends I always say if you rent a car in another country you should really think about this kind of full coverage. It is not that you will surely have an accident. It is just that when you really scratch the car and face bills in a language you cannot read and deal with companies in different countries your mind feels much better when you have something like AXA Full Coverage. When I look at the claim record now I still remember the awkward moment of the scratch but I also feel this sense of relief and I remember that I booked this car through QEEQ.
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