Excess bands and waivers explained
The excess is the one number on a hire contract that can ruin a month. It is also the number most readers skim. Here is what it means, what the bands look like around Mbombela, and where a daily waiver stops being worth the money.
Updated 15 October 2026Mbombela
What the excess number really is
The excess is the maximum you are liable for if the car is damaged or stolen, regardless of fault in most standard agreements. It is not a fine and it is not a deposit. It is the ceiling of your exposure, and the counter will hold part of it on your card as an authorisation while the car is out. A reader who sees a R20 000 excess and thinks it only applies to a total write-off has misread it: a single kerbed alloy and a cracked bumper skin can run to R9 000 in panel and paint, and that comes off the excess, not off an insurer.
What confuses people is that the same car can carry three different excess figures depending on the rate you took. The cheap online rate almost always carries the highest excess. A rate quoted over the phone with a waiver bundled in looks dearer per day and is often the better deal on a route with gravel or long night driving. Ask for the excess figure in rand before you ask for the daily rate. If the answer is vague, ask again.
The bands you will be quoted
Around the Lowveld, counters tend to work in four bands. A small hatch sits near R20 000. A compact crossover or a mid-size saloon sits around R28 000. A seven-seater people carrier or a double-cab bakkie sits at R38 000 to R45 000, because the panels are big and the parts queue is long. Anything described as premium or luxury runs from R55 000 upwards, and on those vehicles the counter will often insist on a credit card rather than a debit card for the hold.
Standard waivers to reduce those figures run between R95 and R180 a day depending on the band. Super-cover products that take the excess to nil, or close to it, run R200 to R320 a day on the bigger vehicles. Over a ten-day family hire that is R2 000 to R3 200, which is real money. Our view, and it is only a view: on tar-only trips in a small car, skip it and drive carefully; on anything that involves gravel, a reserve, or two drivers who both get tired, buy it.
What a waiver does not cover
A waiver is not insurance and it does not forgive everything. Almost every agreement carves out damage to the underbody, the roof, the interior, the tyres and the glass. It also carves out water damage, which matters more here than people expect: the low-water bridges on the back roads towards Bushbuckridge look harmless until a thunderstorm upstream arrives twenty minutes before you do. Drive into standing water and you are outside the waiver entirely, waiver or no waiver.
The other common carve-out is unauthorised use. That includes a driver not listed on the contract, which is why the additional-driver fee of around R60 a day is the cheapest insurance on the page when a couple is sharing a long drive. It also includes crossing a border without written authorisation, towing, and taking the car onto a road that the agreement names as excluded. Read the exclusions page. It is usually the shortest page in the pack and the one that costs the most.
Tyres, glass and the gravel question
Tyre and glass cover is sold separately at R40 to R70 a day and it is the one add-on we almost never argue against on routes that involve the R37 or the R40. Timber trucks and cane haulers throw stones. A windscreen on a mid-size car is R3 500 to R6 500 fitted, and a sidewall cut on a low-profile tyre is R2 400 upwards, often for a size nobody in town carries, which means a day lost waiting for stock from Gauteng.
Gravel is the grey area. Many agreements permit maintained public gravel roads and exclude everything else, including unmaintained farm tracks and riverbeds. Some exclude gravel outright and then quietly expect you to drive to a lodge that sits nine kilometres down a dirt approach. Ask the question directly: may I drive the last stretch to the gate, and is the waiver still live if I do. Get the answer initialled on the contract, not promised across the counter.
Reading the damage sheet before you sign
The condition report is your only defence, and it takes four minutes to do properly. Walk the car anti-clockwise starting at the driver's door so the kerb side, where the damage lives, comes early rather than last when you are rushing. Photograph each wheel face, both bumper corners, the sills, the windscreen in raking light, and the boot floor with the mat lifted. Then photograph the odometer and the fuel gauge together in one frame.
Mark everything you find on the sheet, even a chip, even a scuff you think is obviously old. A counter clerk who is honest will thank you, because it saves an argument on return when neither of you remembers. If the printed sheet already shows twelve marks and the car has twenty, add the eight. It is not pedantry. It is the difference between handing back keys in ninety seconds and spending an hour in a small office being shown a paint depth gauge.
Three things to carry with you
- 01Ask for the excess in rand before you ask for the daily rate, and get the band in writing.
- 02Waivers exclude underbody, roof, interior, tyres, glass and water damage almost everywhere.
- 03Four minutes with a phone camera on the kerb side is worth more than any add-on you can buy.
Read on
Send us the contract before you sign it
Five minutes of reading at this desk has saved readers five-figure excess claims more than once. Tell us the car class, the dates, the route and the counter, and we will come back with the figures that matter.