Private Insurance for Hire Cars abroad..?

[Patsy]

I'm looking into car hire for a 2 week holiday to France later this year and I've noticed that the insurance waiver excess amounts are now really high - almost a third of the total hire cost.

I read last year that a number of companies offer an insurance service where you take a single policy (which can be per trip or annual) which takes care of the excess waiver and some initial research on my part has shown that it'll be a lot cheaper (about half) to sort it this way.

Anyone got any experience of doing something similar? And has anyone made a claim without aggro from the car hire company?

[vrsmxtb]

I always use a third party car hire insurance company, and don't take out the car hire offered one. Never had to use it touch wood, and a fair bit cheaper.