Not long ago, a reader sent me the email below and since my answer has some valuable info to save money, I thought, I would run the tip again. “One day when you were on the air with Leo Laporte you mentioned a website that was great for finding cheap car rentals. I lost it but I’ve used it before, and it was great. Can you please send it to me?” ~ John N.
Hi John! I sure can and here’s the website as well as my trick on saving money while renting a car.
Want to save money on your next car rental? I’m here to help. If you’ve read my post on car rental tips I learned from renting a car in Maui or The ultimate guide to renting a car: 14 tips that will save you time, money, and headaches, then you can move on to another story. But if you haven’t read them, then you will definitely want to read my tip below and then follow up with these posts, which I’ll link to at the bottom as well.
I pride myself on being able to save people money and time when they travel. I followed my own advice this past week and was amazed at how much I saved.
First of all, if you’re renting a car, I highly recommend not pre-paying. You won’t save that much money and if the rate changes, you get sick or something comes up, like you lose your license on the flight over (like I did once), then you’re pretty much up the creek without a paddle.
As I wrote in my recent Maui trip report, my advice is to “reserve early and keep checking prices. I mainly use Costco when I book car rentals. I usually check all the sites first, like Avis, Enterprise, Hertz, Auto Europe, Booking.com, Expedia, Priceline, RentalCars.com and Autoslash.
What I like about Costco is that they give you four different companies and you don’t have to pre-pay. The trick is to reserve a car when you book your plane tickets and then keep checking to see if the price has gone down. Often, the price does drop, as it did on my trip to Maui and on this past trip to Connecticut … and I have screenshots to prove it.
Unfortunately, I was going to my childhood hometown of South Norwalk, Connecticut to attend my father’s funeral. We were only in town for two days since my son has missed so much school he can’t afford to miss anymore. So, we flew in the day before and left the day after. BTW: On this trip, we flew from Toronto to New York’s LaGuardia — here’s my trip report.
If I had been by myself, I would have just gotten rides from friends, family or an Uber. But with two little kids, it’s not that easy since most car seats are a hassle. Besides, I like having the freedom of going wherever we wanted.
To save on costs and to make the trips to and from the airport easier for everyone, I used two of my Blacklane vouchers for a professional driver and so I wouldn’t have to deal with schlepping my kids to and from a car rental. Then, I rented from Avis in Stamford, Connecticut. Their location is right next to the train station, which is easy – especially for those coming from New York’s Grand Central Terminal. FYI: If you need a luxury car service to or from an airport, consider Blacklane, which I use.
When I first booked this trip a couple of weeks ago, the rate for a Full Size car from Avis was $146. See screenshot above.
Three days before our trip, I checked again and the price dropped to $100. That’s almost a 50% savings! See screenshot above.
Then the night before the trip, I checked again and to my surprise, the price had dropped another $14. See screenshot above.
My total car rental was just $86 for two days, which is a pretty darn good deal. Now remember, it doesn’t always work this way. It’s all about supply and demand and many times, it’s the opposite, which is why you should always reserve a car as soon as possible and then keep checking. If the price drops, cancel your original and rebook.
I hope this helps and don’t forget to sign up to my free travel newsletter for more travel tips like this.
KEEP READING:
–Must-know car hack: How to open your car windows before you even get in
–There’s no additional driver fee with Costco travel rental cars
–Don’t forget to check the rims of your rental car
–The ultimate guide to renting a car: 14 tips that will save you time, money, and headaches
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I had prepaid a rental car from Avis in September for a trip from Miami airport for one week to visit the Florida Keys. I thought a got a good price by pre-paying $683. However I read your recumbent email about checking the price and it was now reduced to $348. I had a friendly representative form Avis who waived the $50 cancellation fee.
Keep on traveling, we enjoy your stories.
Hi Johnny,
Sorry about the canceled Hawaii trip. Hope your family is well soon.
According to the people at http://www.gemut.com, who specialize in European rental cars, waiting to pay for a rental car until you arrive at the rental counter can be a mistake.
Not having to pay to get a reservation sounds great and it creates many bookings for the rental company. However, when the customer’s plans change, or he/she finds a better deal elsewhere, there is no incentive to cancel. Most do not. Also, given the current rental car shortage, some customers make multiple pay-later “reservations.”
This has created overbookings and a signifcant percentage of no-shows among pay-at-the-rental-counter customers. Thus rental agents can only make an educated guess at how many cars in each of some 30-40 car categories they will need throughout every rental day.
Each morning, the rental car counter manager must deal with two reservation lists: one list of “maybes”… those who have not paid, some of whom will never show up at the rental counter, and a “yes” list of prepaid customers, more than 99% of whom will arrive to pick up their cars. If there are more bookings than cars, as there often are these days, some of the “maybes” won’t get a car.
Let’s presume, for example, your family of six is scheduled to pick up a 7-passenger van at 10 a.m. at Munich Airport. Your booking is in the “maybe” category and the manager on duty has just two 7-pax vans — always in short supply — left but three reservations, two pre-paid and your pay-on-arrival. The rental counter manager knows you may never show up. It is thus unlikely you will be given one of the two vans. Even if you arrive first, the rental manager, in order to keep the two vans for the prepaid customers, will try to satisfy you with a different car category. He is assured those customers will arrive because he already has their money.
Let’s further say he has two 7-passenger vans and two bookings, one prepaid, one pay later. A customer with no advance reservation walks up to the rental counter at 0930 with a credit card and wants one of the vans. Even though he has two vans, the manager—who’s compensation is probably somewhat based on rentals-out-the door— knows the pay-later customer may never arrive and thus will rent one of his two remaining vans to the walk-in customer. The pay-later customer will not get a van and, with a party of six, there are very few vehicle alternatives…two medium sedans or an 8/9-passenger van—if one is even available. (Rememer: not all rental vehicles are retuned at the scheduled time or date, and a few come back damaged and must be removed from revenue servcie.
So, in these car rental shortage days, when booking a rental car in Europe, pay in full in advance. Almost all of Gemut.com’s pay-in-advance rental car customers can cancel for a full refund up to 48 hours prior to the scheduled pickup.
Autoslash will track your car rental and notify you of any price drops.
I’ve been using Autoslash.com for a few years now, and their Track a Rental function does all the legwork of watching for better prices.
No that’s a third savings not fifty percent off.
Excellent advice to keep checking prices. VFTW calls it Shepherding your reservations I’ve save lots! I’m going to try it on some award tickets if the miles go down. Could happen on a United Polaris award reserved at 200,000, but I see short term awards for only 100,000
My condolences on your father’s passing. I’ve been following you for 15 years or so. I know how wonderful your relationship is with your father. So hug your son in your Dads memories and God Bless