EXPERT TIP: If you re renting for 3 days or more, check to see if a weekly rental is actually chea

There are A LOT of options when renting a car - and a lot of ways to get a good price (or get ripped off if you don't know what you're doing)! Here is the exact process I use every single time I rent a car to ensure I get the best price.
Chase s Ultimate Rewards Portal road travel directions not only allows you to use your Chase points to book a car rental if you want (every point is worth 1.25 cents), but it also gives you great deals on car rentals if you want to pay cash.
You ll need to have a Chase Ultimate Rewards account to be able to access the prices.  The easiest way to get a Chase Ultimate Rewards account is to open a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Ink Plus card, my favorite personal and business credit cards, respectively.
In my experience, Rentalcars.com , Kayak.com , and Carrentals.com are the three best aggregator sites for car rentals with any stipulations you want (one-way rentals, rentals anywhere in the world, etc.).
EXPERT TIP:   If you re renting for 3 days or more, check to see if a weekly rental is actually cheaper in total price than a 3 or 4 day rental.  If it is, choose to rent the car for a week and just drop it off early.
Expert Tip:   Renting cars from non-airport locations can oftentimes save you up to 50% and be more convenient if you aren t flying in.  If possible, make sure to check all the rental locations in a city versus just the main airport location.
Nice post. It s frustrating that I can book really good deals on flights and find all kinds of stuff but the rental car world seems like the wild west or a 3rd world bizarre. One trick I ve used it to try and leverage status road travel directions matching via credit cards and other programs to get better status with the big 3 rental companies so I get faster service and some upgrades. Beyond that I try to avoid renting at the airport location as the taxes and fee s are much higher. Many times you can get a cab to a nearby off airport office and rent the car much cheaper overall. I also have gotten much cheaper rentals at low cost vendors like Advantage and Fox at the cost of having to wait in line at a counter for the rental process.
@believemywords- Yeah, rental cars are definitely road travel directions a whole different ballgame. I like your suggestions though, and I agree 100% with going to non-airport locations. The prices can be as much as 50% off.
So far, I ve had great experience using AutoSlash.com. I book using Travelocity or the rental website, then enter the info into AutoSlash for it to track. They automatically email you when they find a lower rate so you can rebook. road travel directions On an upcoming rental next week, Autoslash just saved me about $180 on a 5 day rental! Of course, you can t book a pre-paid, non-refundable rate if you want to take advantage of this, just FYI.
@swnofilmerGardner- Autoslash is an awesome tool to use as well. I don t have tons of experience with it, which is why I didn t include it, as well as because you can t book pre-paid, non-refundable stuff. But definitely worthwhile road travel directions for a lot of situations.
I am not sure if EXPERT TIP: If you’re renting for 3 days or more, check to see if a weekly rental is actually cheaper in total price than a 3 or 4 day rental. If it is, choose to rent the car for a week and just drop it off early. is accurate. My understanding is if a rental is returned earlier than what was originally booked, the rate will be recalculated to the amount of time that was actually used with the car. This would mean that a weekly rental of 5-7 days could default to the daily rate if the car was returned after only 2 or 3 days. I am interested in hearing input from other readers if this situation has applied to them as well
@Chuck- I m also interested to hearing other people s experiences, because for me, I ve always been able to get the weekly rental, return road travel directions it early, road travel directions and not pay anything more. In fact, there have been times when I ve rented it at the weekly rate (let s say $140, or $20 a day) and then when I returned it, I ve actually been able to talk them in to giving me some money back (in this instance, road travel directions if I returned it after 5 days, I would get $40 back- $20 2).
@John Brew- Good to know, I ve used Holiday Autos before and had good deals with them, for sure. I believe all of them show up on Kayak and the other aggregator sites. road travel directions Yeah, Priceline is also ok to use, I just personally don t because I like to have more control.
Also try carrentalsavers.com and BJ s or Costco if a member. Capitalone.com if you have the card. Don t forget that if you pay with points, partially or in whole, the collision damage waiver won t be in effect.
Yes, I frequently use carrentalsavers.com as they give rental road travel directions prices with several programs and discounts which are easily added in. Also you do not need to pay for the rental up front. I ve also gotten good prices using the Capital One portal. I sometimes use BJ s especially if I m renting from Alamo and want to add an unrelated driver for free.
@Clare road travel directions N- I ve never tried carrentalsavers.com, so thanks for the tip. I ve heard the Cap1 portal is good, I think it s usually equivalent to the Chase one. Which makes it a good option for people without Chase cards.
Great post, and very helpful information! I would like to add one more possible tip. After checking all your options and getting a feel for your best price, I then check out hotwire.com. If you don t mind which rental car provider you will be riding with, sometimes you can get a price lower than other places. We were able to get about a $10 a day rental in Miami, and with the saving, upgrade it to the convertible road travel directions Camaro SS for the drive down to Key West. The price ended up being about the same if I had booked an economy car.
@Christian Nommesen- Great advice. If you don t mind which one you get (and I don t), then you can go to Hotwire or Priceline and put in a rate lower than what you found. road travel directions Sometimes, you ll get great savings. Thanks for sharing!
I travel to ski a couple of times each winter. I find it extremely difficult to determine if your car has 4 WD or not. It is a necessity to get over Donner Summit in California or you have to buy chains. Just because it is a Ford Explorer or Toyota RAV4 does not mean it has 4WD in Calif. To ensure you are getting a 4WD you have to reserve a gas guzzling land yacht that costs more than your lodging and ski passes do for the week.
@Bill Maloney- I would think the easiest way to know if it has 4WD is to call up the rental car company and try to book it through them. If it s not showing online if it is 4WD, or it can t guarantee road travel directions it, then maybe calling road travel directions them up is the best option. I ve never needed one with 4WD, so unfortunately, I don t have a ton of experience with that.
My comment is based on two accidents in rentals cars, neither being my fault. Both cost me considerable money though, so I recommend NEVER use points or miles to pay the rental fee. Then you cannot use the primary insurance that the credit card could provide. In both accidents, I ended up paying for admin fees and loss of rental income while the repair was done, even though road travel directions I wasn t responsible for the repair cost itself. Read the fine print in the rental contract and you will see it spelled out.
Alan C says. Ask for discounts such as AAA or AARP, etc. Also ask if there is any way to get the car cheaper. The answers I received were useful. 1. Car rentals have unlimited miles. SOMETIMES road travel directions you can get a car with limited miles such as 1000 miles or less with Huge savings. 2.Sometimes they don t tell you about promotions but if you ask if there are any promotions, they will tell you and the savings can be Huge.
@Alan C- Yep, you re right. NEVER hurts to ask, and I think the 1000 miles or less can be extremely useful for a lot of people who need a rental car for only a few days or for just around town. Thanks!
This is certainly a great chain of smart ideas for beating down car rental costs. I rent for a month to 3 months at a crack. I ve found that searching an area for smaller firms that rent older vehicles has been my best bet. I admit the products often are far from attractive, road travel directions but I have saved as much as 50% over the best prices I could find using many of the procedures and sources listed here. As an example Airport truck car rental in San Diego will pick you up and drop you off with no extra air port taxes or fees. Don t accept their first quote, negotiate for a better price on the phone.
@getrude- An excellent idea. I ve found that this holds true with most things when you are renting long term. Usually, you can get great prices, whether it be on cars, accommodations, or anything else. And if you are renting road travel directions longer term, you can always negotiate. I talked someone down from almost 70% once on an apartment in Croatia because we were staying long term, and both of us were happy!
Also, if you reserve months ahead of your trip, keep checking rates as you get closer to the time of your trip. The rates may drop and you can book at the new lower rate and cancel the old, more expensive reservation.
Hi, I live in China, travel to Netherlands often. I can fully recommend to rent a car at BB L carrental. The ONLY no hassle road travel directions car rental company I ve come across My experiences in New York, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Toronto, Beijing always every time I end up paying more than I thought I should and still running a several thousands dollars road travel directions risk as others have demonstrated so clearly.
BB L Carrental and this is NOT an advertisement! I m only a very happy customer offers: free mileage, no penalty charges for early or late delivery, full coverage including Collision Damage Waiver, free GPS for Europe, and they charge your card AFTERWARDS. road travel directions Best of it they deliver the car to the airport, and pick it up at YOUR convenience (call 1 hour ahead of arrival).
I ve been using them for the last 5 years. Once I forgot my wallet and they shipped it for me back to China. Once my daughter helped me wash the car, with sand instead of soap And she was doing that for full 5 minutes before I noticed. Da