Rental Car tip

[ophthoapplicant]

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Hey guys,

I've been at a few interviews where friends were just completely ripped off on rental cars. I think we're at that stage where every cent counts, so here is something I found helpful:

You can go to priceline and "bid" on a rental car. I just did this, and bid $11 for a 24 hour rental car. The system warned me that since my bid was so far below market value it had a high chance of being rejected (suggested that I up it to 30 dollars). I stuck with $11 and got a great car from Avis with normal daily rate of $82. I'd suggest picking the compact cars and not just the economy ones since I think the compact ones get a little better gas mileage. Anyway, with taxes it was still less than $20.

Something to try next time perhaps. Good luck!

 

[DOapplicant]

I've been using expedia.com and paying around 25-30 + tax. But I'll definitely try priceline next time.

Thanks for the tip!

 

[Les Yeux]

you'll still pay the fees...but I recently got screwed over by them (slightly)

SITUATION:
flying into Chicago --bad weather on the way so I hopped a slightly earlier flight to try and miss it.

so I arrived 2hrs early and tried to pick up my car. However because I put into the computer system that I would be picking it up at 9:30pm and it was 7:30pm the computer was charging me $10/hr for the extra 2hrs. And this couldn't be changed (not even by deleting 2hrs from my drop-off time)

PROBLEM!
The rental car place can not change your reservation times if you arrive EARLY or LATE. And I called Priceline and they won't change anything for you either!!

SO not to rant and rave, but I just want to warn other people about this because I was NOT happy. And honestly this is a ridiculous policy. There were plenty of cars there and really wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't payed a "third party" for the rental.

LESSON LEARNED
when you're making the booking on priceline or hotwire and say you only need it for 1.5 days and of course you get charged 2 days. Make the booking for a few hrs before you arrive if you think there's a possibility you might get in early.

In the END
I didn't want to pay $20. But I didn't want to wait 2hrs either. So I waited until it was 1hr and 25min (figured this is when the computer would round down to only 1hr early) and just paid $10 extra for the car.

Sorry such a long post.😳