Florida - car rental collusion in FLA

I am wondering just what to do about a severe and obvious problem of price jacking which I have just witnessed for car rentals in FLA.

Who does one complain about such price collusion? I am in Canada so I am not familar with the US laws but I have just witnessed a law being broken by all car rental companies working together at price controls in FLA market at Xmas.

THis is criminal activity and I will not be a victim of it.

Collusion or supply Vs demand?

This isn't really the right forum for this question, but if you believe you have information about antitrust violations, here is the appropriate USA government agency to contact:

Information from the public is vital to the work of the Antitrust Division. Your e-mails, letters, and phone calls could be our first alert to a possible violation of antitrust laws and may provide the initial evidence needed to begin an investigation.

To report antitrust concerns to the Antitrust Division:

•Step 1: Fully Describe Your Concern
•Step 2: Submit the Concern to the Citizen Complaint Center
If you do not think your concerns involve the antitrust laws, you may want to visit the Department of Justice site for more information or send an e-mail to AskDOJ@usdoj.gov.

http://www.justice.gov/atr/contact/newcase.html

Good luck. Holiday pricing does not equate to price fixing.

Nothing to do with Miles, so moving to TravelBuzz!

Aviators99
Moderator
MilesBuzz!

Good luck. Holiday pricing does not equate to price fixing.

If the companies all get together to decide their 'holiday pricing', wouldn't that be price fixing? No idea if that's what happened here, just asking.

Demand for cars in Florida goes way up at Christmas. Of course they all raise their prices then.

Ever price a hotel room in Calgary during the Stampede? Or a rental car? Have you tried to get a London hotel room for the end of next April? This is not collusion and is not a U.S. issue. It's worldwide business reality.

throw wal mart and sears in jail for "black friday"pricing.

the hotels in italy have "trade show"pricing, and none of the offers are accepted. this deal is city wide, and orchestrated by the sponsor of the show. talk about collusion.

what does "sloulder and high season" mean in air line tickets?

In a competitive, free market economy, supply and demand models would predict that prices would rise above otherwise competitive equilibrium in high demand (or supply shortage) situations.

Each market participant could have independently made the decision that higher prices could be sustained and be profitable during periods when there are many consumers demanding the product.

Therefore, the higher prices alone will create a yawn among antitrust enforcers. Any such complaint will be read (at best) and filed. (Been there, done that.)

Unless you have some evidence of actual collusion other than high prices during a high demand period, don't waste your breath, or your time typing a complaint.

everyone can have access to car rental rates online....i wold think that each company has people that look at competitors rates & adjust their rates if they think they should....

The same kind of price jumps happen for midweek car rentals in cities with high business travel (i.e. ATL). Or weekend rentals out of Manhattan. If enough people are willing to pay these higher prices, why would the rental agencies charge a lower price? Simple economics at work here.

To be fair, the OP hasn't clarified exactly what the evidence for the price-fixing was. If all 10 car rental companies in the city were charging precisely $211.73 per day for their mid-size models, or something on that level, that'd be a lot fishier than if they were all just generally expensive during the holidays.

I am wondering just what to do about a severe and obvious problem of price jacking which I have just witnessed for car rentals in FLA.

Who does one complain about such price collusion? I am in Canada so I am not familar with the US laws but I have just witnessed a law being broken by all car rental companies working together at price controls in FLA market at Xmas.

THis is criminal activity and I will not be a victim of it.

How can you say it is criminal activity when, in the same post, you say that you are not familiar with the applicable laws?

Please continue to follow this thread in the FT Florida Forum.
Thanks..
Obscure2k
TravelBuzz Moderator

I've been living in Florida for years now, and I can tell you that prices go up for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, College Bowl Games, and the Daytona 500. It's a fact of life here in this heavy tourist destination. There is no conspiracy to it. It is the law of supply and demand, and that is all there is to it.

Seems everyone disagrees with the OP, and s/he hasn't been back. :)

I've been living in Florida for years now, and I can tell you that prices go up for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, College Bowl Games, and the Daytona 500. It's a fact of life here in this heavy tourist destination. There is no conspiracy to it. It is the law of supply and demand, and that is all there is to it.+1

One of the complicating factors is that concurrent events in different Florida regions prevents the moving of cars from one Florida airport to another . For example, the Tampa, Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale-Miami areas all host college bowl games roughly at the same time. In February, the Daytona 500 and the Miami boat show have high demand for rental cars during the same week; and so on.

Other regions have the option of moving cars to high-demand cities; Florida rental car locations don't always have that option.

Last year I was looking for a rental car from 12/31/09 through 1/10/10 at TPA. Like you I kept finding very high prices but I kept looking, then like magic I found a car for a very reasonable amount come up on the Hertz site, so I booked it. Just 5 minutes later checking back the lowest priced car available was more then 2x the price I just got.
The moral of the story is persistence pays off sometimes. I think this is really the law of supply and demand at work, and the rental companies have less supply then they used too.

The moral of the story is persistence pays off sometimes. I think this is really the law of supply and demand at work, and the rental companies have less supply then they used too.The law of supply and demand, but importantly, greater sophistication in yield management software allows the companies to tweak prices (sometimes on a single-rental basis, as in the example above).

The OP makes an unsupported allegation and disappears. Is that new? No, but it is still bad form, just as the allegation itself is patently false.

Despite all the typical snarky FT comments, I believe our OP has
more of a clue than you guys give him credit.
I was searching for a rental car from February 26 to March 3, This
is the week after the popular President's day, and the Daytona 500 rush,
If it was really supply and demand, the folks in Europe would be similarly
effected. That is not the case, as I mentioned in this TA post from today.
We live and learn;

Feb 01, 2011, 12:33 AM

My wife and I are taking our five year old grand daughter to WDW for a week.

We have reservations at the Wilderness Lodge Villas. The following week we are spending five days at the HGVC Parc Soleil.

I have been trying to line up a rental car for these five days.

I checked with Budget, Alamo, National, Hotwire and Priceline.

The quotes have been $606, $762,

$688, and $362 for Hotwire. Priceline

wanted $60/ day plus. The best rate was Thrifty at 260.

Here is where it gets interesting;

I checked three European sites; Travelsupermarket, usrentacar, and carhire 3000. All these sites were significantly lower than the US sites.

I ended up renting an intermediate

size car from Auto Europe on the Travelsupermarket website.

My cost $148.60 from Alamo.

I question the huge disparity in rates.
Reply

I checked with Budget, Alamo, National, Hotwire and Priceline.The quotes have been $606, $762, $688, and $362 for Hotwire. Priceline
wanted $60/ day plus. The best rate was Thrifty at 260.

I checked three European sites; Travelsupermarket, usrentacar, and carhire 3000. All these sites were significantly lower than the US sites.

My cost $148.60 from Alamo.

I question the huge disparity in rates.
Reply

I still don't see the collusion. Collusion means competitors join together to keep prices artificially high. The fact you got a low price, by definition, means there was no collusion.

Let's take Major League Baseball as example. The courts found that the team owners used collusion because they agreed amongst themselves not to pay above a certain amount for talent. Because there are only thirty MLB teams, and all 30 owners had entered into the agreed, there was no way a player could have been paid the higher amounts they were seeking.

For the Florida rental market to demonstrate collusion (as sellers instead of buyers, of course), all companies would have needed to agree to pricing floors that would never have been undercut.

The examples in this thread are classic market pricing - plain and simple. That Alamo chose to sell a discounted rental via a relatively obscure portal is not collusion, it's simply the same kind of selective marketing that allowed me to buy the laptop I'm using right now for hundreds of dollars less than the price that the manufacturer was charging on its own online store.

Rental companies offer differentiated pricing every day, every season: My co-worker just returned from a trip to Burbank - she paid $29 per day ++ for a full-size rental via Hotwire; the company that she actually rented from (Enterprise) wanted $49 per day on its site, while Hertz and Avis wanted $64 and $59 per day, respectively.

Also - one reason why the European sited may have been lower is that, on average, European renters tend to purchase more add-ons (damage waivers, personal injury insurance, GPS, etc. These add-ons, especially the first two, are highly profitable, and probably go a long way towards mitigating the lower initial cost of the rental.

Despite all the typical snarky FT comments, I believe our OP has
more of a clue than you guys give him credit.
I was searching for a rental car from February 26 to March 3, This
is the week after the popular President's day, and the Daytona 500 rush,
If it was really supply and demand, the folks in Europe would be similarly
effected. That is not the case, as I mentioned in this TA post from today.
We live and learn;

Feb 01, 2011, 12:33 AM

My wife and I are taking our five year old grand daughter to WDW for a week.

We have reservations at the Wilderness Lodge Villas. The following week we are spending five days at the HGVC Parc Soleil.

I have been trying to line up a rental car for these five days.

I checked with Budget, Alamo, National, Hotwire and Priceline.

The quotes have been $606, $762,

$688, and $362 for Hotwire. Priceline

wanted $60/ day plus. The best rate was Thrifty at 260.

Here is where it gets interesting;

I checked three European sites; Travelsupermarket, usrentacar, and carhire 3000. All these sites were significantly lower than the US sites.

I ended up renting an intermediate

size car from Auto Europe on the Travelsupermarket website.

My cost $148.60 from Alamo.

I question the huge disparity in rates.
Reply

Just to update the Rental Car situation in Orlando;
Those European sites like usrentacar and carhire will not allow
US citizens to take advantage of those lower rates. You must have a foreign drivers license.

As I followed up with Auto Europe, located in the state of Maine, they informed me of the small print on this rental.
They did immediately credit me.

I wound up using Thrifty, and a promo code from FT 0010020167. I used Blue Chip and they upgraded me to a brand new full sized Ford for less than $200.