Two years ago when I rented a car out of LAX, the women at the counter told me that I should have gone offsite. I think they said that there are extra taxes when you rent at LAX.
Hertz used to accept the code “last” for good deals on last minute rentals. Haven’t tried it lately.
Try calling the rental places and ask for best offer.
Great tip, jym. About Enterprise- sometimes, one office in a town has better deals than another. So check a couple of offices around the airport. I don’t find that with Avis or its sister, Budget.
I usually check through different portals and find that Costco is the cheapest, followed by USAA. Airport taxes are considerably higher so you should check off site (I only rented off site once in Orlando because the line at the airport counter was horrendous).
Beware of tacked on collision insurance and the awful scare tactics they use to get you to offset “loss of use”. Check carefully what credit card you use and what car rental perks it offers. I know that our USAA insurance covers rental car “loss of use” even if we don’t rent through them.
Another thing I hate is when searching for prices you are quoted a lower price if you pay in advance. Don’t encourage them by doing this! At least with car rentals and hotels you don’t have to pay in advance and forfeit your first born child if you need to change later, like with plane tickets. Let’s keep it that way.
ETA - the desk rental agents will try to get you to upgrade your model and buy the extra insurance because they are paid a hefty commission if they do so. I had one recently tell me that my luggage wouldn’t fit in the trunk of a Toyota Corolla. I told her, “funny, that’s the same car we drove to the airport in”.
When I was flying for medical appointments, the medical center had a contract, so its patients got a nice discount with Enterprise and my car was $370 instead of over $900! Normally, I book with Costco.com and keep checking rates. Sometimes I get good AAA rates. In general rates are higher these days as there have been so many mergers, there are basically 2 rental car companies do not as much competition.
I have gotten good deals by renting away from the airport and also if I’m able to return the car as soon as we are done with it at a location near my hotel, rather than keeping it (and paying for parking) the entire duration of my stay.
I like to rent using my Chase Sapphire visa, which provides PRIMARY collision coverage for the car rental.
Hive Chase Sapphire Visa. I had no idea they provided primary collision insurance! I have to make sure mine does!
I’m flying to Cleveland in September. The car rental prices are outrageous there now…even for booking in September. I’m guessing this is because of the GOP convention…and the Indians winning streak. I’m going to wait for a while to do my rental car.
Another tip I got from a friend…some car dealerships do rentals…and not very expensive at all. To do that, however, I need a ride to and from the airport…45 minutes away…not a good cab or uber fare!!
To be safe, I often book a car rental on Costco.com and keep checking for it to drop. Sometimes, it just stays high or goes higher and I want to be sure to have something. I’ve really noticed an increase in rental rates since the last few mergers.
The other issue is that car rental companies pretty much rent out ALL their cars (keeping relatively low inventories), so if you have ANY problems during your rental, YOU have to have the servicing while you have the car, including repairing slow leak. We try to keep our rentals as short as possible these days.
I always check AAA, Costco and USAA. Usually USAA gets me the best deal. I avoid picking up at the airport for longer rentals. (For shorter rentals the savings might not make up for the cost of transportation to the offsite rental office. )
Those are the 3 sites I also check, @ClaremontMom . Last trip I was able to apply a AAA code for an extra (free) day, but I’d gotten to the Hertz rental through our USAA account. The totals didn’t quite mesh (it said the discount of $49 would be applied at time of rental with the coupon code, but the total was only $25 less than what my reservation said. Oh well. ) The weird thing is that DH has Hertz gold, and when we got to the parking spot that had his name in lights on the board above it, there was no car in the spot!! They gave us a chevy malibu instead of a nissan versa so it was roomier anyway. We coulda saved some $ as DS offered to let us use his or his wife’s car, but we decided to rent. Maybe next time we will take them up on it.
Hmmm, thanks for usaa tip–will try that for next rental. Never tried it before.
The other thing I’ve found with USAA, is I can return a car to a different destination without any additional cost…not sure how common that is with other rates.
ETA: So it helps if I’m taking it somewhere, or just returning it to the airport (that I avoided when picking it up!)
I am really loving http://autoslash.com . I have used rentalcarmomma coupons, I have AAA and am very good at finding rental deals on my own.
I’m renting a car in Savannah next month and the best deal I could find was $250. I went to autoslash and put in my info (the airport, the dates) and it came back with a deal for $150 (Hertz). Then it checks every day and automatically rebooks if it finds a better deal, which it has done now, twice (still Hertz). I’m now at $115 for the week!
Here’s a NYT article about it: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/your-money/autoslash-a-rate-sleuth-makes-rental-car-companies-squirm-your-money.html?_r=0
Did comparison shopping for few days rental car in Chicago area for us And guests flying in for son’s wedding.
Costco had best rates compared to Priceline and other sites.
For a summer rental in California, the prices may just be quite high. As that is prime travel time, choose the best rate, book now, and then keep looking. You can always cancel later if booking directly on the rental company site. Some airports are expensive to rent from, for others it makes little difference.
NY Times Haggler did a piece today about Payless Car Rental charging renters for a full tank of gas even if they bring the car back full. Sounds like a scam and a company to avoid.
We recently got a badly cracked windshield while renting a car. (I had declined all rental car coverage as usual). My own auto insurance covered the replacement of the windshield. I thought I would have to get the $100 deductible from my credit card company (they tell me that is a cardholder benefit) but in a strange twist my insurance company (State Farm) made a mistake and paid the entire $212, when they should have only paid $112 and left me with the $100 deductible. Had I known the entire bill was going to be $212 I might not even have made an insurance claim.
Thank you to those who recommended renting away from the airport. Just booked a car in Boston for $20 per day few miles away from the airport. At Logan the price was$46 per day. And didn’t have to prepay it.
Also, if you haven’t yet booked your flight, you might want to check car rental prices at regional airports in the area. I am traveling to NY in August and will be staying in Pennsylvania, near the Allentown airport. There are some flights to Newark are less expensive, but it turned out that the savings on the flight would be completely wiped out by the cost of the car rental. Not only that, I found out that United Airlines runs a shuttle bus between the Allentown and Newark airport, and the cost differential between a flight that included the UA bus to Allentown, vs. the cost of the flight to Newark only, was – get this --$2. So basically I can take the same flight, have the airline put me on a bus to take me closer to my destination at almost no cost, and then rent a car for 1/3 or less of the cost that it would run out of Newark.
I’d note that I found the budget rate on the car via Kayak – listed prices at the car rental sites were higher.
It’s a bummer that Enterprise does not participate with autoslash as that is the only rental company that services my upcoming vacation area.