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You shouldn’t be hit with a dropoff charge for this. I used to rent cars all the time at SFO and drive them straight to San Jose airport and drop it off. I thought most rental car companies considered SFO, SJC, OAK all somewhat interchangeably since they’re so close.</p>
<p>What rental car company wanted to charge you a dropoff fee? Have you tried Hertz and Avis?</p>
<p>We did this back in April during our college road trip. When I first started researching it was going to be over $400 for a 48 hour period. I tried everything: Costco, Hotwire, the car rental companies directly. I was dragging my feet & ended up not booking the car till about a week before and the cost came in about $200. This was for a pickup in Cleveland and drop off in Pittsburgh.</p>
<p>I’d recommend booking the cheapest rental you can find (that has no cancellation penalty) & then keep checking to see if something cheaper comes up between now & when you need it. Rates can go UP or down & you don’t want to get stuck waiting & have a REALLY HIGH rate.</p>
<p>We’ve done this a couple of times, in general Hertz with the Entertainment book coupon has worked out to be the best deal–both in California and Florida.</p>
<p>Avis wants to charge me $150 to pick up the car at the airport and return it in the city!</p>
<p>Another person looking unsuccessfully. I was thinking it would have to be cheaper (and more convenient) to rent a car for the drive from Indy to Boston to drop my son off at college rather than 2 additional tickets, plus shipping (or ordering to pick up there) all his belongings. I couldn’t find anything under $750 for the time we needed, and nothing under around $950 for a larger vehicle (I was hoping to bring his bike). I will try what was suggested and see if a shorter rental might work better since I don’t actually need the car to get around Boston.</p>
<p>Edited to say that evidently that is the case! I pay around $150 per day whether I keep the car for 2 nights or 7 so when I was looking at a weekly rental, the price was ridiculous. Looks like if we dropped it off right when we got there (and even rented another one if necessary), it would be a lot cheaper!</p>
<p>We just rented a car through Priceline, but that is to pick up and return the car to the same place. I’ve never done a one-way rental. I had some rewards ($3 per day toward rental car) and bid $11/day, so I ended up paying $8/day for a compact rental car. The total price for three days was $53.86 ($24 rent + $29.86 in taxes and fees).</p>
<p>One other thing that has helped me with rentals is I find the lowest mainstream rental price I can (generally via costco) & then send an email to AAA locally & they try to match or beat the rental I have found via Hertz. It has worked very well for me.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago I rented a Ford Expedition in FL and drove it to NY, dropped it off at an airport. For a 5-day rental, the TOTAL charge–no mileage, no additional driver fee-- was around $140. (We upgraded to the Expedition for an additional $15 total, or it would have been even less. We needed a big car to haul stuff.) Incredible deal. This was Budget using a Costco member offer. I looked into Enterprise, and the cost would have been around $850. Or more. Priceline had no offers for what we needed.</p>
<p>We also just did this in May…I shopped around and Hertz was the least expensive for us.</p>
<p>GladGradDad - It’s not a dropoff fee, but when you click the OneWay option the daily rates go WAY up on the websites. I plan to call AAA and see if they can help.</p>
<p>Since most rental companies do not require a credit card or charge ANY penalty for cancellations, we generally just book the best thing we can & then try to go through any other avenues. It’s best to at least have SOMETHING in hand, in case rates climb further & then you’re stuck!</p>
<p>For us, AAA could rarely get anything significantly better than the lowest rates I could find. Unfortunately, often discounts & coupons do NOT apply to one way rentals either.</p>
<p>AllThis:</p>
<p>I don’t understand. I just went to the websites of both Avis and Hertz, entered ‘returning to same location’ (SFO) and ‘returning to a different location’ (SFO and OAK) and the prices were very close to each other. I said the rental would be out on Monday and back in on Friday and the difference between returning it to SFO versus OAK was about $20 on Avis and about no difference on Hertz although Hertz was somewhat more expensive overall.</p>
<p>What are you doing differently?</p>
<p>Well, one of mine wasn’t an airport so I tried Hertz on our August dates using OAK->OAK ($91.66/day) and for the same Camry SFO->OAK ($54.90/day). I’m using a company discount ID. I’ll try Avis!</p>