You can pretty much do that across the board, as long as you don’t choose the pre-pay option that is typically a few dollars per day cheaper. You don’t even need to include any payment info when you reserve a car and there’s no penalty if you don’t cancel or show up. And yes, with rental cars it pays to keep checking back a couple times a week, as the rate may change for the better. Same with hotels. I reserved a hotel back in May for later this summer for about $120/night. I checked back last week and the rate had dropped so I cancelled and re-booked for $75/night.
Does anyone have experience with Fox Rent a Car? They are significantly cheaper than other companies.
Reading reviews online they are mixed, but I expect that most companies would be.
I also used travelocity to reserve a car with Enterprise. They are more expensive than Fox Rent Car, but I’ve had good experience with them before.
I’ve always been happy w/ Enterprise; I’ve never heard of Fox.
Check out Turo, a peer-to-peer car rental company. We recently rented a sweet, sweet BMW convertible for 9 days for less than a boring mid-entry car would’ve cost from a corporate company.
We walked out of the airport and the owner handed us her keys in the pick-up zone; she met us at the end of our trip right outside the check-in counter – three minutes of transaction, no counter waiting, or shuttling, and we got EXACTLY the car we rented.
Seconding this. I always try to use Turo (formerly RelayRides), because you can get a “real” car with actual character for what you’d pay for some mid-tier econobox with zero distinguishing attributes.
I’ve rented convertibles, jeeps wranglers, sports cars, you name it, and all for prices that were in line with a mid-level rental car. Plus, they’ve never tried to upsell me on the BS “insurance” most rental car companies try to cram down your throat.
I used them once in Florida when I had to go at the last minute when my grandmother was in hospice. They were cheap as dirt (I think the rate before taxes was something like $12/day - thank God it was in the summer!). The location was off-airport, and it took me a while to pick up and return, but it was worth it under the circumstances.
P.S. I usually use Kayak.com, which just searches rates but then links you to the car company site to book. Never had a problem. Hotwire.com has also been good to me and once was the only way that I didn’t end up with a truly Godawful dropoff fee to drop of at a different location. But double-check the hours of the location where you are dropping off and picking up - once Hotwire had it wrong and we got there to find it was closed. Luckily I had a second backup reservation nearby in case our flight was delayed.
I like Turo because I can rent cars I’ve always wanted to drive that usually can’t be rented through other companies, like the 328 convertible we had last week. The woman we rented from also had a Tesla and Wrangler on offer. (Sidenote: the 328 was a fun, fun car, but markedly sluggish in comparison to my 330ci).
I also like renting species of cars I trust and know how to drive well.
In fact, we’ve been thinking about pimping out the two cars we don’t drive much through Turo (an X3 and Mini Cooper) and make some bucks.
I’m going to put in a plug for Sixt Rental Cars. I initially used them a couple of years ago in Florida because they had convertibles for less than the competitors. They are a European company and have more of an upscale fleet. They have been upgrading me for free lately. Last summer they upgraded me to a Mercedes and 2 weeks ago in Philadelphia they upgraded me to a Jaguar. Kinda nice.
They only have limited locations so it depends where you are flying into.
You often get much better rates if you rent a car at a location other than an airport. Many counties and states place a high tax on airport rentals than aren’t charged elsewhere in the same locality.
I use Turo for all my business trips. Its the only rental service I know of that has a selection of manual transmission cars.
Cant stand those boring slushbox econo cars!!
Yes, I rented with Fox a few months ago in Denver. I only needed the car for a few days and wasn’t going to need to do much driving so I did the Manager’s Special deal where they pretty much give you whatever they have available. I ended up with a couple year old Ford Focus which wasn’t anything special but did the job. A couple friends renting at the same time did the same deal and one ended up with a Kia Soul and one ended up with a new Altima. Denver has some electronic-only tolls and I did determine that the toll-transponder rental through Fox is a much worse deal than the other competitors I looked at. It’s something like $11/day for the unit (which was only slightly less than the car itself) whether you go through any tolls or not. Others only charge if you need it. We skipped that and just avoided the toll road/express lane.