# Advice on renting a car **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 23, 2014, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advice-on-renting-a-car/693800 "2014-07-23T00:57:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tastes_of_chocolate/32/3232_2.png) [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tastes_of_Chocolate)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advice-on-renting-a-car/693800/21 "2014-07-24T03:28:43Z")
A friend suggested this, and I just used it to get a good rate. Go online, like Kayak, and enter your ideal rental. Find the cheapest rate and use that as your baseline. Poke around, see if you can get better. Then go to a “name your own price” site, like Price Line, and offer about 1/2 of that. Your bid cost doesn’t include taxes, so that gets added on afterwards. I went from $650 for a minivan for 8 days, using a corporate discount, to $450 after taxes, for a minivan. Since I don’t care which of the big rental companies I use, I’m happy with the outcome. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advice-on-renting-a-car/693800/22 "2014-07-24T03:50:23Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > These discounts tend to be taken from the top-tier prices and can be beaten in other ways. I don’t think I’ve ever used a AAA discount that saved more than nickels; the discount price was higher than other tier prices. I rented a vehicle in May. The best value I got was through AAA. It started at a 30 percent discount, on top of the discounted rate from the rental company because I’m in their program. > [@](#): > > All gas deals are bad ones. Period. Bring it back full or filled to the specified mark, and keep the receipt from five miles away or less. Fuel deals are for suckers and those who (have to, or think they have to) drop the car off at high speed on the way to their gate. Bad choice for everyone else. I was given two choices in May: [ol] [li]Prepay a full tank (at market rates) and return the vehicle with any amount in the tank.[/li][li]Return with a full tank, or get stuck paying to fill it at double the market rate.[/li][/ol] I prepaid, and filled the tank once. My cost at the pump was actually more expensive than the prepaid tank ( but only a few cents/gallon). ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c57346/32.png) [@Little\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Pig)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advice-on-renting-a-car/693800/23 "2014-07-24T04:19:16Z")
> [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](#): > > Check if your credit card or personal insurance provides sufficient rental car insurance. If so, you may be able to save money by declining the additional insurance from the rental company. Be careful about passing up on the additional insurance from the rental company. Search this board for past threads on the subject. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advice-on-renting-a-car/693800/24 "2014-07-24T13:11:08Z")
> [@Little\_Pig](#): > > Be careful about passing up on the additional insurance from the rental company. Search this board for past threads on the subject. Excellent, informative post from a former Enterprise employee: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5581153&postcount=7](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5581153&postcount=7) Know what your personal insurance and/or credit card covers, and read the supplemental insurance policy very carefully. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advice-on-renting-a-car/693800/25 "2014-07-24T13:21:29Z")
In the Caribbean I’ve been very happy renting from small, family owned/operated places that are borderline rent-a-wrecks. Very reasonable prices, and the few times we’ve had mechanical issues they arrive in minutes with a swap car. No worries about keeping sand out of the car and no problem if the top is down during a downpour. ---
**Author:** ![Student\_Driver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3da27b/32.png) [@Student\_Driver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Student_Driver)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advice-on-renting-a-car/693800/26 "2014-07-24T15:03:59Z")
> [@GreasyJack](#): > > If you _really_ want to save some money, some used car lots have rental car side businesses. Often this is through a Rent-a-Wreck franchise, but some lots just do it independently. The cars aren’t going to be practically-new like the ones from the big rental companies, but they’re still usually only a few years/a few tens of thousands of miles old. I’ve gotten $10-a-day rates from buy-here-pay-here places near me thanks to this. Nice for in-city driving, but considering the condition of some of them, I’d be wary of relying on this for big trips or moves. One of my other tricks is to go through the dealer/mechanic I regularly use for my main car. They often have low business-to-business rate deals with nearby renters, usually to snag cheap rentals for people getting service to their cars, but not limited to such. $15 a day for a new(-ish) sedan from a national company (Thrifty?) for a week-long vacation? I wanted to go to New Hampshire for a bit, didn’t want to rack up the miles on my car, a hefty drive from Indiana to back. Called the dealer, told them I needed a rental for a week and had them summon it. Voila! You could throw the dealer a bone and have your own car sent in for a $30 oil change while you utilize their set-up, then pick your car up when you’re done with the rental. Similarly for needing specialty vehicles (I’ve gotten pick-ups to help friends move for cheap, dropping my car off for an oil change then grabbing a truck for less than I’d have to pay a coworker to borrow one), and similar agreements probably exist with your insurance agent. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advice-on-renting-a-car/693800/27 "2014-07-24T15:22:26Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > In the Caribbean I’ve been very happy renting from small, family owned/operated places that are borderline rent-a-wrecks. Very reasonable prices, and the few times we’ve had mechanical issues they arrive in minutes with a swap car. No worries about keeping sand out of the car and no problem if the top is down during a downpour. In the Caribbean, it’s difficult to drive more than an hour’s walk from where you rented the car, or much of anything else. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Grestarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grestarian/32/3227_2.png) [@Grestarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grestarian)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advice-on-renting-a-car/693800/28 "2014-07-24T23:32:44Z")
> [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](#): > > Check if your credit card or personal insurance provides sufficient rental car insurance. If so, you may be able to save money by declining the additional insurance from the rental company. This.\* And I happen to be renting an Enterprise car right now. And when you return the car, make sure that they’re not charging you for the coverage if you declined it earlier. That’s been a trick I’ve caught a few times. Also, if you get a car with a half-tank of gas, make a note of it and return the car with a half-tank of gas. Don’t bring it back full, because they won’t financially comp you for the extra fuel. [The guys at my local Enterprise know me pretty well, so they will comp me 1/X of a tank on my next rental, which is pretty cool of them but I think they do it because I’m a long-time loyal customer and they know I’ll eventually be renting from them again.] And this keeps happening to me: I reserve the lowest-priced car well in advance and for some reason it’s pretty busy when I arrive to pick up my reserved matchbox-on-wheels. Since they don’t have many cars on the lot and they don’t like to keep me waiting, they give me ‘free upgrades’ and put me in the lowest-priced car they have available – which is usually two or three categories higher than my reserved car. When I bring it back (with as much gas as it had when I left), I make a point of checking to make sure they’re only charging me for what I reserved. [They did tell me it was a free upgrade, after all!] Oh, and reciprocate the courtesy: Tell them about any handling quirks or mechanical issues that are less than perfect. They want to know so they can take care of the matter(s) and not endanger the next driver. And if the car was less-than-perfect and you let them know, they might even give you a free upgrade or an extra quarter-tank on your next rental. –G! \*There was a particularly windy weekend when I rented a car and decided to take the extra coverage, just in case the high winds blew a tree branch on the hood or into the roadway. Later, when some guy blazed through a yellow-going-on-red light and kicked a rock up into my windshield I took the rental back to the agency, explained the situation, and walked away paying nothing at all for the damage. Note, however, that the personal liability could still have gone on my insurance, but the damage costs were part of what I paid for with the rental fees. [Your coverage may vary, etc. etc.] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advice-on-renting-a-car/693800.md?page=1)