Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies - experiences with car rental bids

This seems like a straight forward bid, but I wondered if anyone tried bidding for a car rental for week or so? Does the bid include all the taxes/fees or is that a "gotcha" after acceptance.

FWIW, I'm interested in 9 days from AKL.

The bid price at least on the .com site does not include any fees and taxes; just the base daily rate. It pays to know what the lowest rate you can get locally is before you bid (and your maximum bid should be quite a bit lower).

At any rate, I don't think PCLN offers car rental outside the U.S. currently 9AKL = Auckland, N.Z. presumably?)

I believe Terenz is correct no NZ PL cars. I still believe that PL auto rentals is a very (to somewhat) bad move.There may be exceptions (NYC?),but not worth the risk and time to save a couple bucks.

I have found that PL bids for car rental are not worth it. Usually the diffrential is about 15% and not worth the trouble.

The hotel difference can be dramatic and a better deal.

I guess I didn't even think about PL not having international rentals.

I rented a one-way in AKL when I was there before and really liked company, but can't seem to figure out who they were. One-way's were hard to locate, this time is RT

Thanks for the information and advice, I can scratch that idea off my list. Helps to eliminate where to concentrate my time.

For weekend and 6 or 7 day rentals, I've found that Priceline can't match what I can get by playing the promo-code game on the various websites.

For 1 day rentals, I usually use Free Day certs from Hertz (I participate in their #1 Awards program for my Hertz rentals).

That leaves 3 to 5 day non-weekend rentals and rentals longer than 8 days. For these, I have on occasion been able to save a significant amount of money with Priceline. (By "significant", I mean at least five dollars a day, but sometimes $10/day or more if I'm looking at a convertible or SUV.)

The key with those durations is that a 3-day non-weekend rental typically doesn't qualify for the "good" promotions, and a 5-day rental is treated as a full week on the agency websites. That leaves enough wiggle room for Priceline to play, even with the $6 juice that Priceline takes.

Longer-than-one-week rentals are a mixed bag: sometimes I can get the agencies to quote these out nicely (e.g., a nice weekly promo rate + 1-2 extra days at the same prorated rate), whereas other times a 9-day rental will turn up as something like $149.99/wk + $49.99/day + $49.99/day. Generally speaking, I hate playing the swap-a-car game on vacation unless I absolutely have to.

Of course, I always consider the airport and agency layouts and factor in the hassle factor of not having a #1 Club Gold/Emerald Aisle/Quicksilver rental. Sometimes that in and of itself keeps me away from Priceline - unless the savings are great.

again I'll disagree with most of the above.

I've found PL to be an excellent deal on rental cars IF renting a convertible, luxury or specialty (SUV).

FWIW I've also had great luck w/economy cars.

It is the mid and full size where I have not had much luck on getting a good price.

I usually get a good deal using coupons, promos, etc. Recently, I did all my checking for SEA this past August & the best I could do was $40/weekend day. I bid on PL and won a bid of $19/day for 2 days for a compact car. I was able to use a double upgrade cpn. That was more an exception than a rule. Hotels are a much better value.

Go to Avis board on FT and find the listing for codes. I just used one in Europe I found there and saved over $200 on a 8 day rental plus upgraded 1 level.