<p>My S has gotten Hertz Gold (I have it free from our AAA, he has it free from his fed govt employer). They don’t charge extra for drivers under 26 if you’re a Hertz Gold, last time either of us checked. He rents for extended periods several times/month. Our AAA signed me up at no charge because they felt I rented often enough & there is no annual fee to us.</p>
<p>Have sometimes seen coupons for various car rental companies waiving the surcharge for under 26-year-old drivers as well.</p>
<p>I checked Advantage Rent-a-Car and the total cost to rent a “Small” car was $2683.99, which included all taxes and fees, from 6/15/12 to 8/15/12 using Oakland CA as the pickup/return location. The price is the same for a 21 to 24-year old driver as it is for a 25+ year-old driver. I think Advantage has the most competitive pricing from what I’ve seen since many of their locations are “off-airport” and/or a little more remote from the normal sites.</p>
<p>Thanks for the additional responses.</p>
<p>SteveMa:
If it was a car for me I’d probably just buy a cheap car and then sell it when done and in fact I’ve done that before. But for my D, who’s on the other side of the country, I don’t want to do it - too much hassle in looking for a decent cheap car, more hassle in selling it, plus more issues with safety/breakdowns with her on the other side of the country.</p>
<p>jym626:
How’d you know I was a Hertz Gold member? I’ll check to see if that helps out in this case - I wouldn’t have thought it’d help for her but given what you and HImom posted, I’ll check.</p>
<p>engineer4life:
Hmmm, maybe you’re right regarding their cost for their own insurance regardless of who actually pays for the car to be fixed although it doesn’t make that much sense to me. The actual cost to fix the car s/b from the renter’s insurance. I can see that there’s some exposure to the outage of the car being out of service while being fixed. As far as the under-insured - it seems that would apply to everyone. Here’s a good compromise - charge an additional amount as a deposit but then return it to the renter if the car’s returned unscathed. But of course, they didn’t ask me for my opinion on this.</p>
<p>jshain:
I’ve found a couple of prices that are less than the Advantage cost you mentioned but thanks for mentioning them anyway because I’ve never heard of Advantage renta-a-car. I just checked them online and they do charge the age differential - it’s a selection on their search page. It’s around $2690 for 21-24 but only $1590 for 25+.</p>
<p>^When I quoted their pricing, I was looking at the Advantage RAC “base rate” charges, which were the same for 21-24 age group as the 25+. I didn’t look at the pricing with taxes, etc. I assumed the taxes would be the same since the base rates were the same.</p>
<p>I don’t know which are of the country your D is in, but when I needed to figure out an answer to this same conundrum, I recall a company called Fox Rental cars (west coast states, CA, AZ etc?) and SOME of their locations did not charge the extra fee for under 25. </p>
<p>Although we were eligible for fee waivers (via Hertz gold and USAA), the rates were still higher than this other companies’ rates. We had a good experience for a month long rental.
There are other locally run car rental companies that DO waive this fee, but you really have to look for them. I think (could be remembering this wrong, though), that there were a couple websites where you could filter for this requirement…Breezenet??</p>
<p>Anyway, our situation was exactly the same…didn’t want D to deal with the potential of breakdowns, selling a used car etc. This was a couple years ago and I remember working on solving this problem for quite awhile, lots of web searching etc.</p>
<p>Let us know how you resolve it…I’m sure many others will benefit from what you learn.
Good luck!!</p>
<p>The surcharge represents the fact that young men (usually, not sure of they do it for young women) statistically have higher rates of cars being damaged, and also more then likely might have insurance that in the case of a major accident might not cover everything. The extra fee is supposed to cover the added risk they take in those cases. They could pontentially force a younger driver to use their insurance that is basically like collision coverage i.e covers everything, but I believe that may be illegal in many places. Not really surprising, young men before 25 pay the highest insurance rates in general. Not agreeing with that, to me it would be as odious as using someone’s racial background as a means of determining rates, since it automatically assumes something based simply on their gender, but they are allowed to do that.</p>