I have used Zest in their previous guise of economycarhire.

They are a UK based broker with all insurances included, including excess and collision damage waiver. Our hire car was damaged by a local driving into the door. We reported it, dropped the car off at the end of the holiday and never heard anything further.

I've not driven in Greece, but when we visited Crete about 20 years ago we 'enjoyed' a few taxi rides. I think the drivers liked to hurtle along the then-new M-ways - the speedos on some of the cars couldn't keep up, showing 100k when the car was actually doing 130 (confirmed by the companion vehicle). So prepare for Mediterranean driving habits.

I like driving in Crete, there are some pretty epic roads, especially in the mountains. The A road equivalents are generally well made up and traffic flows quite freely. In the summer a good proportion of the cars are foreigners in hire cars. Some locals expect you to move into the shoulder, which is effectively a lane to use, so they can overtake. That can have bad surface so watch out of you do that. Towns can have narrow roads so watch out for pedestrians.

Obvs the cars are LHD which helps with wrong side of the road driving. Just don't bang your arm on the door when changing gear! I do that really frequently.

As others have said, Insurance4CarHire have been good in the past.

We generally use them when we travel, and had cover for a trip to NZ which covered the gravel roads as well as tarmac.

Claimed once, annual policy, when a hire car was damaged in Glasgow (still not sure if it was when we had the car or when it was waiting for pick up) and no problems with the claim.

I haven't priced them recently because where can we go? Certainly not NZ or Oz.

It is well worth having this cover if you are hiring for more than a few days a year because the excess waiver from the hire companies is daylight robbery!

Edit: we have been to Crete and Cyprus, amongst other places, and didn't have any problems with the traffic and the locals. YMMV, of course. Holiday destinations tend to be aware of tourists and be generous to them. :-)

Edited by LittleGreyCat on 13/07/2020 at 19:58

I used one of these insurance companies two years ago when went to Iceland to top up local cover which was very expensive and had gaps in cover eg the car hire insurance policy didn't cover the underside of the car (not for off road driving, but car parks and other normal driving instances) - the premium was so cheap that it was silly not to purchase the top up cover.

When I retuned the car I was told there was a new mark on the bodywork, in my view it was a fishing exercise, luckily I'd taken extensive photos of the car at pickup and the marks were present on these pre-departure photos. Sorry, no claims experience, but useful suggestion in avoiding a bad experience.