I’ve never rented a car before, but this weekend my ex-girlfriend is coming down to D.C. and we’re driving back up to New York with a bunch of my stuff. So I popped on to Travelocity to find out about how much it would cost for a one-way, one-day car rental. Here’s my question:
Of the four rental companies that quoted prices, three were in the neighborhood of $90. All well and good. But Dollar Rent-a-Car was priced at $44.99. Why so low? What’s Dollar not providing that the rest of the car companies are? I wanna be a savvy consumer, and I’ve been taught to be wary of prices that seem too low. So what’s the catch here?
There are a bunch of variable involved in car rental costs. They should all be spelled out in the rental companys’ fine print. The cost of renting a car will depend on:
[ul]
[li]Type of car (compact, midsize, large, SUV, Partrige Family bus)[/li][li]Miles per day included (some include unlimited mileage, some include only 50 mi per day. You’ll pay extra for every mile you drive above the alotment)[/li][li]Fee for dropping off at a different location than pickup[/li][li]Insurance (I think this is almost always a separate item to the reantal fee. Be sure you have insurance, either as a rider on your own auto insurance plan, a credit card’s plan, or from the car rental place)[/li][li]Rental location surtax (rental companies located at airports often charge an extra fee)[/li][li]Fuel fee (some include an upfront charge to fill up your gas tank)[/li][li]etc[/ul][/li]
Read the rental agreements carefully. They’re all online.
You don’t have to pay for all the hidden costs of the fat options that the big rental agencies offer to their frequent special program renters.
Dollar sells by low cost, and higher priced agencies sell by higher levels of service.
Sounds to me like the difference is the charge for dropping off at another location. The Dollar rate is about what it should be for just renting for a day and returning to same location. That is just a guess based on experience. They may have a car that needs to be returned to where you are going.
That’s the price for a car that they’ll be out of by the time you get there. Would you like to upgrade to a (some other car) for an additional $19.99? :mad:
One time when I arrived at a rental counter, I was told that the only car they had left in the category I had reserved (mid-size/whatever) did not have power steering, and if I wanted power steering I would need to choose a car from the more expensive next class (sedan/something or other). If I had my senses about me I should have asked them what make & model of car is made without power steering these days, but I was dead tired and easily suckered.
Actually, if I remember rightly, Dollar was the rental service that allowed me to reserve the cheapest car on the list, then when I arrived to find no cheap cars available, they gave me a big, honkin’, brand new red Ford pickup truck with a CD player–at no extra charge.
I suppose I spent a couple extra bucks on gas, but I made up for it by doing some mud-boggin. Fun!
Travel is one of the things where there can be wild price differentials for comparable service. Not just cars but also hotels and air. Dollar markets differently, controls costs differently, but you could very well be getting an equivalent car and service to the others. Most of the items mentioned by Kamandi are gotchas at the counter; they are not built into the rate you were quoted and they often will not tell you about them unless you specifically ask. These can add up to a chunk. I don’t think a drop-off fee is daily; you should definitely ask about that.
A few times I have reserved a car at one agency at the lowest price I could find, then at the counter found a long line so went to a big one like Hertz, told them my price, and they gave it to me. There was no line at Hertz. You can usually get a lower quote at a hotel just by asking for a better rate. Air fares can differ by a factor of 5 depending on day of week, routing, airline, etc.
So don’t be afraid of the lowest price, Dollar is reputable, but do ask about ALL the charges besides just the daily rate. And if you have an insured car your insurance company will probably cover you in a rental, saving on the high insurance rates the rentals offer.
A similar thing happened to me in Las Vegas last Christmas. I reserved a compact car for some sight-seeing from the Dollar location in my hotel (Mandalay Bay - I highly recommend it). I went to pick up my econo-box the next morning only to be told “Sorry, sir, we’re fresh out of compact cars. Would you be willing to accept a convertible instead? No extra charge.”
This is completely off-topic (well, not completely), but since the OP mentioned he is a first-time car renter, I wanted to mention that at every rental car agency I’ve ever rented a car from, you must have a credit card in order to rent a car. Debit will not do; it must be credit. The lady in front of us at the Hertz counter in St. Louis, MO a year or so ago didn’t realize that, and wound up having to call her sister in the middle of the night to come pick her up (from 50 miles away) because Hertz absolutely would not rent her a car without a credit card.
For one day that is a lotof money. I make my rental car reservs only at their websites. I got a really
nice new truck for $19 per day once. In 2001 I used hertz website & got a nice new
toyota camry for two days for $22 per day-this was a one way rental too. Try car
rental sites first.
The Dollar I use in Manhattan is the poster child for “not exactly” but the rate is so good that I’ve used them a couple times anyway. The service at check-in is kind of slow, returning is kind of slow, the cars have had higher mileage than Hertz or Avis and I’ve gotten cars with not a whole lot of gas in them so I had to gas up early in my trip, and so on. Even so, I’d use them again. They rent Dodge Intrepids for less than Hertz rents Ford Focuses.
