Budget Travel - USA Car Rentals Cheaper Thru Canadian Sites?

Here's a weird one.

I need to rent a car in Phoenix for a couple of days, so I did my regular research by checking out the various websites. Most of the sites had pretty much the same price. 2 days car rental, economy, PHX airport pick-up and drop-off, driver over 25 years old.

$114-$122: This is the price for the cheapest car available at Orbitz, Priceline, Travelocity, and others.

Now for the weird part:

$96: This was the price Expedia.ca (Canadian version of Expedia) gave me (including taxes and fees). Oh, and this was in Canadian dollars. Doing the exchange rate conversion, it works out to about $88 USD.

Here's a weird one.

I need to rent a car in Phoenix for a couple of days, so I did my regular research by checking out the various websites. Most of the sites had pretty much the same price. 2 days car rental, economy, PHX airport pick-up and drop-off, driver over 25 years old.

$114-$122: This is the price for the cheapest car available at Orbitz, Priceline, Travelocity, and others.

Now for the weird part:

$96: This was the price Expedia.ca (Canadian version of Expedia) gave me (including taxes and fees). Oh, and this was in Canadian dollars. Doing the exchange rate conversion, it works out to about $88 USD.

It would be interesting to check the price on Expedia.com as well - the rate may say more about Expedia's global buying power than a regional difference. If you really want to check more rates, here's a UK aggregator (http://www.travelsupermarket.com/c/cheap-car-hire/) that will give you prices in USA.

Off to polish my nerd glasses...

Now for the weird part:

$96: This was the price Expedia.ca (Canadian version of Expedia) gave me (including taxes and fees). Oh, and this was in Canadian dollars. Doing the exchange rate conversion, it works out to about $88 USD.

try netflights.com for your dates. It's UK based.

For whatever reason, car rental companies tend to have very different rates depending on what country the rental is booked in. It's not just the buying power of the sites, but the prices offered by the companies themselves. If you put in a different country of residence on avis.com or hertz.com, for example, you'll sometimes find drastically different rates.

Expedia.com had a price of $122USD. I'll give the others a try before the link is taken down.