Key Post: Car rental in US.

Has anyone any tips based on practical experience?

I heard you can rent a car on line, then when you arrive to pick up the car, there are additional charges for insurance, etc. that nearly double the total cost.

Re: Car rental in US

For a one-stop shop you can try including hiring through [broken link removed]. I think they use Dollar but they include tax and insurance in the quotes they give back.

You could also try looking with Expedia and [broken link removed]. They all end up with results from the various car rental agencies (which you could also try directly). Based on some trawling I did towards the end of last year, Avis and Dollar seemed to be consistently the cheapest (not incl. tax & ins.).

Re: Car rental in US

Ebookers.ie allow you to book/pay a fully-inclusive price in Euros here before you travel, and have no unexpected extras when you arrive.

We used them successfully last summer.

Car rental in US

In 1999 I made two internet bookings for car hire in the US.

The first one was for a 10 day hire in Seattle. Luckily I printed all information about my booking from the internet before I started my journey. Be sure to read through their terms and conditions. However, when I arrived at the airport for the pickup the charge was considerably higher than that quoted on the internet. It also included the state tax, which, as a perk of booking through the internet. which was supposed to be waived. The insurance costs also were much higher.

I stood my ground with them (in all it took about 30 mins of arguing). Mind you my humour was not good after 11+ hours in the air with a sick child who vomitted all over his seat!

All ended well, with them agreeing to the terms agreed on the internet.

I flew to San Francisco and proceeded to pick up a five day car hire there (same booking with Alamo) and I had no problems with that portion.

Goes to show - know your rights - read all the small print etc.

Gook luck!

car rental in US

For your information, Hertz required that I could produce a credit card when I was added to a rental policy as a named driver even though my husband's credit card was paying for the rental. They said it was required cos It showed that I was a responsible person?!?!?!

car rental in US

I used Avis in San Francisco last year. There are lots of offers in the local press etc. but when you add on all the extras the price really increases. For example, many rates quoted are aimed at US citizens and assume that you will transfer the insurance from your own car to the rental car, etc. I don't think that the cheaper rental companies are necessarily trying to rip you off, but I assume it happens, but it is a different system, and if you don't know it you could suffer a loss. All things considered Avis were cheaper, no extras (I did tell them exactly what I wanted) and the level of service was excellent, both at the pick-up near Union Square and on delivery in SF airport. There were no 'extras' added onto my credit card. I would use them again.

Tested and proven...

Lucky enough to be going to the states tomorrow. Have been using a program called travelaxe from www.travelaxe.com.

It compares prices for hotels / car rentals from various agents sunch as expedia, hotels.com and comes up with the cheapest source.

Try it, it works and best of all its free.

Re: Tested and proven...

I also agree about Travelaxe....

Excellent for hotels and cars in the US. I have booked successfully using the program.

car hire usa

it cost me over 500 dollars for 2 weeks car rental with dollar lately. the car rental was about 240 dollare,the remainder been insurance.

Re: >>Car rental in Florida.

Some other posts

daveg
Unregistered User
RE: Florida - car hire, accommodation

Were heading off to Florida for 2 weeks in April. I need to book car hire for 2 weeks and were hoping to get a convertable. Cheapest I can find is with www.orlandovillas.com/ for 662 Euro's including all taxes and insurance for 2 drivers. I think this is excellent but can I get better?

Also I need to book 1 nights accomodation near Miami airport. We were thinking of the Hilton. Has anyone any recomendations or advice on sites to book with.

Thanks in advance.

Oh btw any advice on Florida please let me know. This is our 3rd trip so it'd be nice to do something different other than the Parks.

hopethisisofhelp
Unregistered User
Florida car hire

Try www.yescarhire.com/ - I've found them to be quite good value any time I've been there, they specialise in just a couple of areas, Florida being one.

Other than the theme parks why not head down the quays - totally different to the rest of Fl in my experience and in April you should have near perfect weather. other places worth going to are Sarasota and Naples

fatherdougalmaguire
Frequent poster
Re: Florida car hire

daveg,

Have you looked at the forums on www.orlandovillas.com? It's chock full of veteran Orlando-ers who have discovered the world outside the parks.

www.orlando-guide.info/forums
www.orlandovillas.com/florida


I guess you've seen the Kennedy Space Centre at this stage. But it's always work keeping an eye on the [broken link removed] to see if there's anything interesting going on. We managed to catch one last year and it was fantastic. It's due to land on Mars on Sunday.

I would agree about their car hire service as well. Cheapest we could find considering they include everything that you need. It's actually done with Dollar through a chap in the UK called Tony Lowe. At the time we were advised to book through the US web site but it looks like that's the only way now.

Boiney
Unregistered User
I used this crowd

Hi I used www.autoeurope.com/ last May for Florida and found them very cheap as they seem to throw in a lot of insurance for not too much. when I got there they were offering a half price upgrade to a convertible (might be a common way for them to squeeze a few extra bob outa you). So for an extra 100 bucks I got a Chrysler Sebring convertible, it was brill, well worth it for crusing around, great fun. So might be worth booking an intermediate and changing when you get there!!! Depends on the time of year I suppose, May is quiet so they might have had extra convertibles.

fatherdougalmaguire
Frequent poster
Re: I used this crowd

Forgot about that aspect of it. Some of the agencies can be quite aggressive in this regard. If you don't fancy an upgrade, the order the car beneath the one you really want so you're upgrading to the one that you originally desired.