Most inexpensive car rental Company?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I got some major car trouble and I need to rent a car muy pronto. It’s likely that the transmission on my car just broke down today, and I teach private music lessons in people’s home’s which means I need to be able to get around all day.

Money is extremely tight right now, so I really don’t care exactly which POS car I get stuck with (as long as it’s automatic. Yeah, I’ve been meaning to learn for years), so long as it’s cheap.

Is Rent-A-Wreck the way to go? Others? How much should I expect to spend? I’m guessing 25 - 30/day.

Also, I will call and find out tomorrow but just to get a heads up one way or another, is it possible that my insurance co. (State Farm) would cover any portion of the car rental, or is that only likely in the case of accidents?

2

I’ve found that Alamo is least expensive almost all of the time. YMMV.

3

Alamo is good, but you must check the price when you call in vs. what you get at the counter, as they can vary widely either way.

Here we have a Rent-a-Relic that goes for $512 for a “month” (really 4 weeks.
The cars run and are clean, and mechanically maintained, but most have minor body damage and may have problems with A/C or radio, etc.
Also, be sure you understand what is and isn’t covered by the extra insurance before you accept it- may not be needed if you use a major credit card.

4

Enterprise has super-cheap rates for when your car is in the shop. An economy car runs around $25/day.

5

I had mechanical breakdown insurance a couple of times, and it covered bumper-to-bumper. Doesn’t hurt to check with your company, but I doubt they would cover. I assume your car is out of warranty?

You should compare different car rental agencies online. Some offer monthly rates. I used Budget.

6

It’s doubtful that the insurance company will cover any of the costs of renting the car unless you have a special rider on the policy to do so.

You will also want to check with your insurance agency to see if they cover the rental car in the event of an accident that is your fault. Also check with your credit card company; many of them include rental car insurance if you rent the car using their card. The car rental agency will probably push a hard sell for their own coverage which is usually quite expensive (often near or more than the cost of renting the car). Personally, I would only take the car rental agency’s insurance if my personal insurance and credit card company did not provide for coverage.

7

Whenever I’ve checked rental rates, Payless seems to be the cheapest although I don’t know how widespread they are. Dollar also usually has low rates. I used to use Thrify quite a bit but once they told me that I had wrecked their car when I knew that I hadn’t. My company ended up having to pay for the “damage”. I don’t use Thrifty anymore no matter how cheap they are. I don’t know that their business practices are any different than anyone else’s but I simply choose not to do business with them.

8

You need to check around because it varies from place to place. The cheep car rental place in St. Louis may be the most expensive in Dallas.

Be sure to ask for a discount for the long term rental.

9

I’ll second Enterprise. Whenever I price compare they always come out on top.

10

I shop online for a rental car with rental car websites & get great deals. $20 for a new truck per day once, unlimited miles. Enterprise is limiting miles these days on some deals. Those $10 deals are nice but I called them they said they only have a limited number of cars for that rate.

11

Thanks guys. I called a bunch of different places today and the cheapest was rent-a-wreck at about 30$/day. But consistent with my current stream of wonderful luck, when I called back 10 minutes later to reserve it, the car was gone.

Thank you all for stopping in, and be on the look out for an exciting new thread from the mind of Moe involving helping Moe get a new car very quickly, coming soon to a SDMB forum near you. (this one actually.)