Car Rental money saving advice

WANT TO SAVE SOME MONEY ON A CAR RENTAL (if you have the time)? Here is the "inside scoop"…

Making money in the car rental business has never been harder. Rates are low and it seems everyone has their hand out to take a chunk of whatever, you, the customer is paying for the rental.

Here are some scenarios and solutions to remember:

YOU ARE ALREADY IN TOWN

An example is renting a car at the last minute AFTER you already arrived. Say you already got picked up by the hotel shuttle and now you decide to get a car because you see the hotel has a car rental in the lobby OR you went to that handy bellman and he suggested to use "XYZ car Rental". Guess what? You are going to pay a LOT more this way. The bellman gets a cut or the hotel gets a cut...or both. To overcome this, the company charges MORE for the same car you could get if you simply called the car rental office directly and had their shuttle pick you up.

YOU ARE SHOPPING ON THE INTERNET

You are going to love this… depending on the company, rate management is either done by what "feels good at the time" or a state of the art computation. Yes, even on the internet…

Example:

JOE BLOW RENT A CAR

Joe Blow is all over the web. They have…..

1) A web site they own and manage

2) A web listing on a multi-agency site (could be one or hundreds)

Joe Blow ALSO is part of a franchise under a well known different name...XYZ Rent a car

XYZ has a web site they own
XYZ has web listings on multi-agency sites (could be one or hundreds)

I bet you're thinking that one person manages it all right? Usually not the case. XYZ wants to bring in reservation for it's local franchisee so they manage some rates for the agency. The local web site has their local manager put in rates for their own web site and the multi-agency sites have rates as well (which can be higher because of the pass-through cost).

Best advice: check as many sites as you have time. You will benefit from their confusion. I would even go so far as to call the local office and see if they go under a different name (franchise) and check THAT web site. One of them will have the car the lowest. Use the coupons as well. Although one site may have a lower rate the other may have a coupon which means it's NET effect is even much lower! Same company, same car, different prices.

This can be quite a game because again, we were talking about just ONE company here...if you want the lowest price in town, you may have to compare what you did above with another company. Hope you have time.

Oh, by the way… I know you remember Sept 11th? Well events happen and lets say you had a reservation for Sept 12th at $300 a week but NOW no one is traveling and the price has dropped to $100 a week. Simple….supply and demand. This changes sometimes so fast for a car rental company, they need to change rates fast...first low….low high...then low...and back and forth until their heads spin. The only thing is YOUR PRICE HAS NOT CHANGED...only FUTURE reservation prices. So if will help to call the local office a day or so before you arrive and see if you can get a better deal then you booked on the internet you may be surprised (but don't tell them you have another reservation-- but do make sure you cancel the higher priced one).

YOU ARE A LOCAL RENTER

Great! Local renters are prized customers and some companies have built empires from your business...take Enterprise for example. So your probably thinking use the big boys right? Well….maybe. Your local rental company is trying to compete for your business so the best thing to do is to call and check the prices of the big dog in town and then call the smaller companies and tell them the price. Whenever I received a call that started with "I just got a price of $129 for a week at XYZ company and want to see if you can do better"...I usually did...vengeance between car rental companies for your business is pretty strong. Don't be afraid to tell the price but DON'T make one up. A good reservationists knows their supply and demand and usually the supply and demand of the other companies and their pricing tactics and will know you are telling the truth or just full of it.

DON'T BE AFRAID OF USING AN OFF BRAND IF SAVING MONEY IS ON YOUR MIND

That little off brand company still had the buying power to get a fleet of cars and manufacturers don't just give them to anyone. How hard was it purchase your car? Try buying 50. That little operator has his neck on the line and just may need to do a good job or lose it all.