Budget Travel - Cheapest Way to Rent a Car

Does anyone have any ideas/ codes/ help regarding rental cars? I actually prefer to drive on my vacation as I haven't had a road trip in ages. I travel frequently for work so I have Starwood and Delta/NW points... but no rental car points - can I trade any of the above in?

Thanks for the help!

If you visit the various rental car fora on FT, you will find advice for each company.

I'll move this over to the Budget Travel forum since it's about traveling cheaply, and not really about loyalty programs per se.

Regards,
Gary
aka gleff
MilesBuzz moderator

Welcome to FT akowalczuk. Cheapest way to rent a car is to let someone else rent the car ;)

I have been getting weekend compacts from Priceline and Hotwire (always Hertz and Budget so far) out of DCA for $12/day. No matter how many coupons I throw at Hertz, I can never match that kind of rate, so I forgo the Gold benefits and the miles. With the money I save, I could buy the miles from an airline and usually come out ahead.

You can redeem airline or credit card points for rental car certificates, but IME they are not a good deal. Using AmEx certs, for instance, would bump up the rate to the point where the savings from the certificate was almost negated, while disallowing coupon codes and disallowing Gold benefits anyway, while the redemption of miles for the certificate itself was a mediocre to poor deal ($0.01/mi).

You used to be able to convert American Express Membership Rewards points into rentals of various lengths at Thrifty, so there is at least a precedent for that sort of thing. I'm not sure what specific rental car awards are still out there, though, especially for your programs.

Be aware that if redeeming points for a rental car award, you are still responsible for the taxes on however the base rate is internally calculated by the rental company for the value of the award. In other words, if you book a rental car award and the rental company bills DL, SPG, AXMR, or whatever $250 for a week-long rental and the local rental car taxes at your pick-up point are 30%, you would be responsible to pay $75 to the rental company when you pick your car up.

Still, it's better than paying $250+$25=$325 for the same week, but in some instances (Alaska in the middle of the summer, for example, on a fullsize car at a base rate of $500 per week, where your taxes would be about $180), it hardly qualifies as a budget rental car!

Priceline and Hotwire; also...

www.vroomvroomvroom.com

www.carrentals.com

OP, can you give us more detail about your origin (and, if it's different, destination), time period, length of rental, etc.? Might be able to help you find a promotion that helps.

If your needs are not specific (i.e. you don't care about the company), Priceline and Hotwire's bidding systems work very well--probably better than anything we can come up with, though.

Priceline is usually the cheapest option bar none.

Avoid the onerous airport taxes/fees by renting from a neighborhood location.

You guys are amazing!!! Thank you so much. Regarding the question about more detail - what I am doing is meeting my friends at the OBX (Outerbanks in NC)... and I'm leaving from nyc. So I will be leaving on a Friday, and probably coming back on the Tuesday or Wednesday after Memorial Day. I know it's a long drive ,but again, it's just because I haven't done a road trip in ages, that I am enticed to do so.

Thanks again!

Be careful driving through VA. The State Troopers work in pairs so when you see one there is always another close by. Travel safe.

I'm leaving from nyc. So I will be leaving on a Friday, and probably coming back on the Tuesday or Wednesday after Memorial Day. I know it's a long drive ,but again, it's just because I haven't done a road trip in ages, that I am enticed to do so.


If you rent a car in Manhattan for a holiday weekend (or pretty much any weekend), expect to pay a small fortune. If I were making this trip, and not carrying too much luggage, I would seriously consider taking NJ Transit from Penn Station to Metropark, Edison, or New Brunswick, and renting from Avis or Enterprise down there. You will likely save two or three hundred dollars by doing so, and you'll avoid having to drive in and out of Manhattan.

You will likely save two or three hundred dollars by doing so, and you'll avoid having to drive in and out of Manhattan.

Kinda what I was thinking. Just an educated guess on my part, but there's a reason rental car companies and hotels offer deals on weekends - biz travelers. NYC, OTOH, people who don't have cars probably want to rent one to get out of town on Saturday and Sunday.

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I just did a quick cost comparison on the Avis site for a five-day rental of a compact car from May 22 to May 27. If you rent from, and return to, Avis in Manhattan, the cost is $602 all in. If you rent from, and return to, the Avis in the Hyatt Regency New Brunswick, the cost is $194 all in. (Optional insurance coverages, like LDW and SLI are additional at each location, of course.)

An off-peak, roundtrip train ticket from Manhattan to New Brunswick costs $17.75, which should be covered by the gas and toll savings associated with renting from and returning to New Brunswick.

Also, in the event it applies to you, the underage surcharges in NY state are FAR higher than outside of NY. I'd have to check, but last time I looked, I saw fees in the neighborhood of $70 per day for drivers under 25.

(This is for two reasons: one, NY law requires rental agencies to rent to anyone over 18, so these companies are exposed to higher risk and higher insurance premiums than if they were to only rent to people over 21 or 25, and two, NY state law permits unlimited vicarious liability such that if a rental car driver causes harm to anyone/anything else, the plaintiff can sue the rental car agency for damages with no cap on the amount. As you can imagine, the huge risk rental agencies incur when renting to, say, a 19-year-old has to be offset by something like a very high underage surcharge.)