Researching Rental Cars « Fabulously Broke in the City
I rent a car when I go back to Ontario or when I travel on business.
Even if the client pays, I still like getting a good deal.
So I did a little online research as upcoming prep for January/February when I may rent a car for the weekend to visit my sister.
Here are all the major car rental companies I tried:
Hertz Budget-Rent-A-Car Discount Rentals Enterprise AvisI have a couple of discount codes for two of them, but I’ll just assume regular rentals for now.
Like I said, it didn’t apply in this case, but when friends sent me discount codes for their wedding parties, it was $50 MORE than what I would have paid, had I chosen the same flight without the damn discount code.
I think they jack up the price and then discount it.
It’s an old trick done a lot by retailers too — where holiday season hits for example, and they raise all the prices by 10% and then discount by 10%.
Pirates.
Always try and figure out if you can get your car insurance covered in some other way, rather than paying the car rental company.
My PC Financial Mastercard doesn’t do it, because they’re a low frills card.
So I got a TD Bank Gold Select Visa with no annual fee, and in the contract, they cover me if I rent the car with the card.
This saves me around $16.95 – $25.99 for each day of car rental, which is around $85 saved per week.
Not only that, they have special rates with Budget, that saves me another $4.17 on the rental situation described above.
That’s it.
Happy Car Rental Hunting!
Every time I rent a car I do exactly this. I search each car company for the dates I'm gone, put the final price in a spread sheet and also use the discount codes (like from Costco or from my work – we have a deal with National that includes insurance). In my spread sheet I have the name of the company, the discount code I used, and the final price. That way when I'm finished going through I can quickly see which was the least expensive. To date, I have ONLY used Budget and Alamo – between the two of them they have ALWAYS given me the cheapest rate.
