Rental Car deals?

[koolmoecraig]

Anyone have any tricks for getting a good deal on a rental car?

[shmokes]

I spent a week in Miami last January and was able to rent a convertible Mustang for about $60 more than the best price I could find for a compact car through the usual aggregators by going through Costco's car rental partnership thing. Car was from Alamo and I was perfectly happy with them. That was $60 more for the full week, so less than $10 extra per day. I can't remember whether Costco was cheapest for compacts. I seem to remember not. But they were way cheaper than anyone else for a convertible.

At any rate it's not an obvious one many people think of and it might be worth checking out.

[Raleigh]

http://www.ebookers.com/car-hire/ - Hit or miss depending on location and vehicle type, but have saved me a decent amount compared to eveywhere else.  You will have to convert the currency as they are UK based, I think they require you to prepay gas, your bank may charge a currency conversion fee and they charge a small fee for using a credit card without a PIN, so factors those in but I've personally had good luck in Florida and California after exhastingly looking everywhere else.  When I was going to Denver and a few other places though they did not have the best prices.  You may want to let your cc company know of the purchase in advance as I think I had a problem last time with them thinking it may be fruad.  I think they are not known for the best customer service but I have never had to find out with my 3 rentals through them.


I also had good luck with Hotwire in San Diego this summer, was renting a Mini Van and prices were like $400 everywhere for the time period I was looking at, ebookers had it about $300 after factoring fees to the price but I got it at hotwire for $280 all fees included, you don't know which rental company you will get, though for some reason they showed the address to return the vehicle to so I knew it would be AVIS prior to booking and committing.