Any desert dopers out there? I’m in Phoenix, AZ and am about 99% sure I’ve found a job. But, my kin out here can’t keep loaning me their cars until I get relocated and money is tight until I start getting paid from this job.
I found Enterprise renting out sub-compacts (Kia, I think) for $23/day (I know there will be additional costs). Anyone got a lead on deals better than that?
The only caveat is that AC is needed, it IS Phoenix. Other than that, I’m not picky and am alone for now.
Let me warn you about a scam that got me last year. I’m pretty sure it was Thrifty. I went online to some website like thriftyusa dot com or something, thinking that was Thrifty’s official website (it wasn’t). I prepaid for the car at $26 per day, and then when I actually showed up at the Thrifty booth, they said I had to pay another $10 because I had used a third party website. Turns out their official website doesn’t have the “usa” part at the end. So my choices were #1 pay the $10 and get my car, or #2 go back to scammers website to ask for a refund and then pay the guy at the booth $49 per day instead of $26. So I paid the $10.
The lesson I learned from this is USE EXPEDIA. They link you to the official website of the actual car company and not some third party rip off with a very similar name designed to fool you.
Second scam I wanna warn you about is choosing a car company whose name you don’t recognize. I went to Seattle 4 years ago, saw Budget offering cars for $39 and this other company I never heard of saying $14 per day. IF IT SEEMS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT PROBABLY ISN’T TRUE. This fly-by-night car company refused to honor my reservation unless I could either #1 produce a copy of my auto insurance policy and show them that it says they would cover rental cars, or #2 Pay them $25 per day for extra insurance. Yes, you heard right, they wanted $14 for the car and $25 for the insurance. I said no thanks, walked over to Budget who rented me a car for $39 but at least they were honest about it. And they upgraded me to a Prius.
Check with your credit card company and your car insurance company to see if they will cover you for liability and/or damage to rental cars. If they say yes, then you can stare down the person at the booth who tries to get you to pay $19/day for insurance.
Whoever you rent from, avoid renting at an airport - instead use one of the remote locations. There are additional fees when you rent at the airport (at least with Avis).
Go to www.carrentals.com . They are a reputable website that trawls all the mainstream and a few of the oddball rental companies. I rarely pay over $20/day (plus taxes & regulatory fees) for a car anywhere in the US. And this is new cars. Last week I had a Scion xA with 400 total miles on it from Dollar for $17/day. The Dollar website advertised the same car at the same location on the same day for $40/day.
There is a second tier of rental agencies that are intended more for the temporary replacement market than the traveler market. e.g. they’re aiming at folks whose cars are in the shop, crashed, etc.
usave.com is one such example; there are many others. A friend used to own a usave franchise and they’re a basically honest outfit. In general places like this are renting out 2 or 3 year old econo-cars. Particularly for a medium-term rental (1 week to 2 months) they can be pretty darn cheap. Make certain to tell them how long you really intend to keep the car. The daily rate goes down a lot the longer you keep the car. If you tell them up front.
My advice, and this may be the wrong forum, is to avoid Thrifty altogether. My “anecdotes are not evidence” story is that when I went to return a car, they told the person in front of me that he had damaged the vehicle. He strongly disagreed. When I came my turn, they told me that I had damaged the vehicle. I had not. Then they showed me a very hard to see indentation that I had nothing to do with and wasn’t even noticeable if you didn’t compare it to the other side of the van. Since I hadn’t noted it on the form when I rented the vehicle, my company was on the hook for it.
Let’s move this over to IMHO so that folks can give their opinions about the different options available in that area and can share their personal experiences as well.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Those fees are usually imposed by the airport and/or local taxing authority, which (correctly) views rental cars at the airport as almost entirely rented by people who don’t vote locally, and can thus be taxed absurdly with no political repercussions.
As for the renting at the airport advice, it was actually much cheaper for me to rent from a major airport. They had a whole floor of a parking garage dedicated to to rentals and I was able to get a mid-size for $217 for 8 days. Everywhere else was over $300.
So check everywhere. I went through RentalCars.com FWIW. I don’t know anything else about them but I had a good experience.
PHX is notorious for having some of the highest rental car fees/taxes in the business. In any case, the OP is looking to rent in his/her home city so more than likely there is a neighborhood rental agency closer anyway. Check out the car rental forum at Flyer Talk and the travel forum at Fat Wallet for codes you might be able to use to get a better rate.