So, I am planning a trip to Texas for part of my winter break this year, and my dad decided as a christmas present to cash in some frequent flier miles so I wouldn’t have to pay for my plane tickets (thanks dad!), anyhow, the way the travel arrangements worked out, I’m flying into one airport in Houston (I can’t remember which, but let’s say Bush Intercontinental for purposes of discussion) and a few days later flying out of another large airport (Houston Hobby, again for discussion, since I can’t remember which one is the innie and which one the outie). I’m thinking of renting a car for the few days that I’ll be in town, but I don’t want to have to worry about returning the car to Bush and then having to get to Hobby to catch my plane.
Does anyone know if it’s possible to pick up a rental car at the one airport, then when I’m done, return it to the same rental company, but at the other airport?
I’m pretty sure this is doable, but they’ll charge you extra, kind of a delivery fee to return it to the original rental location. I’m not sure if they actually do, though; it might be internal accounting.
It’s called a one way rental and yes many rental companies will allow it. They usually charge extra. You can get the rates online from most rental car companies. You can play around with the from and to location on their web page and see exactly how much extra they charge before you make your decision.
I’ve done it, even extremely long distances (NY to SF). Seems like they should be paying you for shipping their car for them, but unfortunately you’ve gotta pay extra.
The difference in cost for a one-way rental can vary a lot. Often it’s expensive. But I was once able to negotiate a discount from SF to LA - it seems a lot of cars had piled up in SF and they were eager to get rid of them.
Note that there is almost certainly some sort of bus or van service between the two Houston airports. The cost of this (probably around $20) would thus put a limit on how big a premium you should be willing to pay for the one-way rental.
As with anything, it depends. The first car that I rented in the US, I picked up in downtown Indianapolis and dropped off at Chicago O’Hare Airport. (I’d been trying to get around the Midwest on public transport, and finally gave up in Indianapolis). They didn’t charge me any extra – perhaps because they had a car that they wanted to relocate to Chicago.
I tried to get a job with a local Enterprise rental office, one of the duties was driving the one-way rentals back to where they belonged. Sadly, I didn’t get the job, the boss said I was over qualified. Maybe so, but it still would have been a fun job I think.
Huh? Why should they be paying you again? Maybe they didn’t need more cars in SF.
As others have said, you could get lucky and they’ll actually need cars from A to B and you won’t be charged. Otherwise there’ll be a fee.
At a former place of employ, a couple of other engineers drove a large piece of equipment in a panel van from here in Santa Barbara to Tucson for delivery. I flew out to meet them to help install it. They would have charged us over $1000 extra to leave the car in Tucson so I had the pleasure of driving a loud empty van back alone one fine day. I was smart enough to plan it so that I hit both the Phoenix morning rush hour and the Los Angeles evening one.
Another chime-in. I do this all the time for work. I recommend calling around, as unlike the round-trip rentals, there seems to be a HUGE variety in prices between the various companies for one-way rentals. I’ve even managed to get a one-way for less than half the cost of a round-trip, oddly enough.
IME renting a car from one outlet and returning it to the same metropolitan area is not considered a “one way,” like if you’re taking the car from Pensacola to Chicago.
The difference may come down to fleet/franchise ownership. If you do business with a company/francisee that owns both locations and uses one fleet of cars for both, then they won’t care if you pick the car up from one of their locations and drop it at another of their locations. But if you are picking up a car from a location owned by one franchisee and dropping at a location owned by another francisee, you may get charged a drop fee, because you’ve taken the first location’s car out of their fleet (they can’t rent it anymore, it has to be rented back by the second location, and they have to share the rental revenue with that second location).
So the bottom line is maybe they’ll try to change you a drop fee, maybe they won’t. It would definitely be worth your while to call around since you should be able to get a car with no drop fee, provided you are picking up and returning to the same metropolitan area.
We did it in Ireland several years ago. Rented at Dublin (where we flew into), left the car at Shannon (where we left). We just called to check if it was OK beforehand.
The rates vary, and it has to do with where you are taking the car from and to, and the needs of the agency.
If you were to rent a car at JFK airport and return it to Podunk, West Virginia airport, you would pay the highest price. The rental company probably has a high demand at JFK and a low demand at PDI (Podunk International Airport). The rental company will most likely be forced to the return the car at their (read: your) expense.
But, if you want to rent at PDI and drop off at JFK, you may get a great rate, as they were trying to return the call that the guy before you left…
Ditto, my experience is that 2-airport towns generally enjoy this courtesy. It’s worked for me outside the airport, I’ve picked a car up in Stamford, CT, dropped it off in Hartford, CT, and there was no 1-way fee. (Both agencies were near train stations, very handy alternative to renting a car in Manhattan).
