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Need FT community help to review AutoSlash.com

Need FT community help to review AutoSlash.com

Old Jun 9, 2010, 9:14 pm
  #31  
Company Representative - AutoSlash and HotelSlash
 
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We don't have all the bells and whistles on the front-end to allow you to see the price history over time (Yapta does a fairly nice job of this), but we do track pricing for pending rentals, and we did send out a few price drop notifications today for rentals that were booked in the last couple of weeks. Those folks had their rate lowered without lifting a finger, which is always nice.

Originally Posted by dstan
Oh, is that how the tracking works??? I though it wasn't rolled out yet, envisioning it to be like Yapta, where you can track speculative trips. I suppose it makes sense though, as there are usually no cancellation fees for rental cars.
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Old Jun 10, 2010, 1:22 pm
  #32  
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Originally Posted by baseline
A drop from $201 to $42 is a phenomenal deal. Would you mind sharing your pickup/dropoff locations and dates? I'd like to play around with this.
Try LAX to LAS on June 13, dropping off the next day.

Entering "drive" in the "rate code" results in a 70% price drop.

ETA: Forgot to mention that this is for hertz.com (obvious in the context of the earlier discussion, but not in isolation).

Last edited by moondog; Jun 10, 2010 at 8:59 pm
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Old Jun 10, 2010, 5:02 pm
  #33  
 
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Big kudos to the team of autoslash for implementing this innovative idea.

I was just curious to know if by chance you guys are planning to make it easy to fill in the location like kayak.

It would be really easy if starts throwing options when you type in location.

Off airport location option is not a neat one as of now.

Just a feedback.

Keep up the good work.^


Dracs
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Old Jun 10, 2010, 6:00 pm
  #34  
 
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Question:

Some discounts require a physical coupon or that the traveler be a verifiable member of a specific organization. How can I as an AutoSlash user be confident that I'm not going to be asked at the car rental counter to hand over a coupon or show my membership in "XYZ Society" to qualify for the discount?
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Old Jun 10, 2010, 9:21 pm
  #35  
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Just booked a rental for PHX in late July.

Very straightforward, easy and intuitive process.

And I booked through a company I've never used before......Advantage....and saved $60 or so compared to the companies I usually use.
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Old Jun 11, 2010, 9:14 am
  #36  
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Originally Posted by dracs
Big kudos to the team of autoslash for implementing this innovative idea.

I was just curious to know if by chance you guys are planning to make it easy to fill in the location like kayak.

It would be really easy if starts throwing options when you type in location.

Off airport location option is not a neat one as of now.

Just a feedback.

Keep up the good work.^


Dracs
Thanks! These items are fairly high on our to-do list. Thanks for the feedback reinforcing that we need to push forward on this Keep your eyes out for improvements.

Originally Posted by fairviewroad
Question:

Some discounts require a physical coupon or that the traveler be a verifiable member of a specific organization. How can I as an AutoSlash user be confident that I'm not going to be asked at the car rental counter to hand over a coupon or show my membership in "XYZ Society" to qualify for the discount?
Coupons listed in the coupon database that require any specific conditions to qualify will display such on the site. For example:

AARP members save up to 25%
Proof of membership may be required at the rental counter
Free Upgrade for BJ's members (printable coupon)
Valid on an intermediate through premium car. Click here to print coupon.
At this time, the coupons and discounts automatically applied by the booking engine are not coupons that require any sort of proof of membership or physical coupons. As the engine matures, we may be able to start applying specialized discounts like this and proactively notify you of any special requirements to get the discount, but you don't have to worry about that at the present time.

Originally Posted by Cholula
Just booked a rental for PHX in late July.

Very straightforward, easy and intuitive process.

And I booked through a company I've never used before......Advantage....and saved $60 or so compared to the companies I usually use.
Advantage is owned by Hertz (although operated independently), so they're not a completely unknown commodity.

Thanks for the feedback!
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Old Jun 11, 2010, 11:13 am
  #37  
 
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A definate maybe for me!

If I book Hertz through Airtran I get a "special" double ff point. It ain't really that good a deal on a weekend because it requires a 2 day rental. The same point thing might be accomplished cheaper by just 2 separate 1 day weekend rentals; but this weekend I actually need the rental for 2 days. Also the Airtran link enters my ff number on the Hertz reservation; which is helpful if I'm trying to use the Hertz kiosk.
Also, whenever I'm able to(not using Hertz) I book through the AARP's CDP# and PC#, because it gives me some additional insurance protection.
And sure enough, when I read through the AutoSlash coupons I found one that might apply to my rental, that I had not known about.

So what do ya think? I'll try dumping all those CDP's and PC's into the AutoSlash and see what happens!
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Old Jun 11, 2010, 12:59 pm
  #38  
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Originally Posted by jackal
At this time, the coupons and discounts automatically applied by the booking engine are not coupons that require any sort of proof of membership or physical coupons. As the engine matures, we may be able to start applying specialized discounts like this and proactively notify you of any special requirements to get the discount, but you don't have to worry about that at the present time.
So I just want to confirm that the Entertainment Book coupons are not currently loaded?
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Old Jun 13, 2010, 3:56 am
  #39  
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A question about tracking rental rates and price drop notifications:

Will this tracking only follow the specific rental company and discount used in the initial reservation? Or will multiple companies and multiple discounts be tracked in case a totally different company or promotion ends up with a much better rate? Just curious. We all know that today the case may be that using Alamo with a promo coupon may be cheapest today, but that Hertz with an AA promo will likely be cheapest tomorrow...

Very excited about this website! Good work! I'm looking forward to using it.

One more question...will you be adding Ace rent-a-car to your list of companies? They are often the cheapest option in my experience.
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Old Jun 16, 2010, 8:03 am
  #40  
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I was "auto-slashed" while snoozing overnight!

Woke up to an e-mail from AutoSlash that my already ridiculously low rate for a rental in PHX next month was lowered by 15%. And they re-booked it for me automatically.

It's hard not to love this new service.

At the rate I'm going, I fully expect to have a free rental waiting for me in PHX and for the Advantage folks to write me a check.
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Old Jun 16, 2010, 9:36 am
  #41  
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New Blog and international address search

We just rolled out a new release to the site this morning. You can now search for non-airport international rentals.

Our blog is now live as well. We have a few initial posts. "Remember When" and the "The Fee Detective" will be regular features. Let us know if there's a topic you'd like covered, and if anyone is interested in guest posting we'd be happy to hear your ideas as well.


Originally Posted by Efrem
I tried it for a one-way rental in France. It was quite happy to take airport codes, but unfortunately I'd like to pick up the car somewhere near central Paris and return it in Bayeux. (Hertz, at least, has offices in both places.) It won't let me enter a non-airport address outside the U.S. and Canada. Is an enhancement for this in the works?

(That said, I liked what I saw for the trial searches I did.)
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Old Jun 16, 2010, 3:31 pm
  #42  
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I'm very impressed. It's nice to see Enterprise on the search bar with everyone else and the extra info (e.g. shuttle to the facility) is helpful too. I also like that there's a "Change Your Search" option at the bottom of the results page.
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Old Jun 17, 2010, 11:24 pm
  #43  
 
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Just booked a car for the first week in July, at LAX. Hope I get one of those price slash emails! By the way, the price was $45 less than anything else I had found on other sites...way to go! ^
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Old Jun 19, 2010, 12:30 am
  #44  
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I'm getting better rates booking directly through Alamo than on Autoslash (sorry for the short notice, I'm headed out for a quick weekend to PHX).

My reservation:
Start Date: 19 Jun 2010 5:30 PM
End Date: 20 Jun 2010 5:30 PM (1 day weekend rental)
Location: PHX
Car Class: cheapest available
Memberships: AAA, Costco, AmEx, several other travel-related

Booking on alamo.com with Corp ID 7014627 (Costco - 10% off) with coupon AU2729MJW (1-class upgrade) nets me a Compact class car (upgraded to Midsize) for $10.41. After taxes and fees, a grand total of $21.58.
For an even better deal, apply Corp ID 7014667 (20% off) and coupon AU2852SDA (2-class upgrade). Use the same Compact car rate of $10.41, but end up with a Standard class car for a total of $20.24.

Even when I put in various combinations of corp ID's and coupons on Autoslash, the best I can get it down to is $12.93/day, $26.19 a/i. Autoslash also confirms me into a compact car, and won't let me start/end my reservation at 30 minutes past the hour.

I know the $6 difference isn't much, but I pay for all my own travel so every little bit helps.
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Old Jun 19, 2010, 5:14 am
  #45  
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OK, this is a *very* interesting nuance of rental car pricing. The key factor here is the time of the rental. Not the duration of the rental but the time itself. Let me illustrate with Alamo.com, and then we can talk about AutoSlash.

Let's take your rental parameters and use 7014667/AU2852SDA since that nets you the best deal. Plugging all of this info into Alamo.com does come up with the price of $20.24 as you stated.

Now let's put the exact same info in, but change the pickup and dropoff times to 5:00PM instead of 5:30PM. Important note that the rental is still a 24-hour period, it's just offset by 30 minutes. One would think that it would yield the same rate, but then again that would be a logical assumption. Logic sometimes has nothing to do with rental car pricing! The actual rate for this rental is $26.19! Why does moving the time 30 minutes change the price by $6? Who knows, but it does.

If you repeat the same exercise using 4:00PM as the pickup and dropoff times, and then try substituting 4:30PM instead, you will receive the same results. So, the there is some strange on-the-hour penalty going on with Alamo's pricing (or a half-hour discount depending on the way you look at it).

This is not new to us. It's actually something that we're working on building into our pricing engine down the road. Basically the idea is that small variations in time can something yield savings. We can automatically test varying the time by up to an hour in either direction and see if it makes a difference in the rate. Admittedly, we have higher priorities in the short term, but it's an interesting angle that can be leveraged.

OK now let's get back to AutoSlash. AutoSlash can in fact achieve the lowest rate of $20.24 for this rental. The nuance is that our time picker only goes in hour increments. This is easily solved though by selecting 5:00PM for your time, and then clicking into the time field and editing it to say 5:30PM. Then when you click search, you'll see the $20.24 price in the grid.

As for the issue of only showing you confirmed into a compact, this is just a limitation of the Sabre interface we go through. There is a protocol that Sabre uses to talk to the rental companies in-house reservation systems. This interface can do all the basics, but it's not robust enough to be able to sense things like an upgrade coupon changing the car class automatically. Even though it shows a compact, the coupon is successfully applied, and you will receive the upgrade. You can actually confirm this by taking your Alamo reservation number from your AutoSlash confirmation and plugging it into Alamo.com to view your reservation there.

Hope this helps to clarify things. I *very much* appreciate your posting the details of your rental and the price discrepancy. We're still optimizing things, so stuff like this is useful to us. It reminds me that we definitely need to focus on timing issues in the future to get our customers the best deal possible.

Originally Posted by baliktad
I'm getting better rates booking directly through Alamo than on Autoslash (sorry for the short notice, I'm headed out for a quick weekend to PHX).

My reservation:
Start Date: 19 Jun 2010 5:30 PM
End Date: 20 Jun 2010 5:30 PM (1 day weekend rental)
Location: PHX
Car Class: cheapest available
Memberships: AAA, Costco, AmEx, several other travel-related

Booking on alamo.com with Corp ID 7014627 (Costco - 10% off) with coupon AU2729MJW (1-class upgrade) nets me a Compact class car (upgraded to Midsize) for $10.41. After taxes and fees, a grand total of $21.58.
For an even better deal, apply Corp ID 7014667 (20% off) and coupon AU2852SDA (2-class upgrade). Use the same Compact car rate of $10.41, but end up with a Standard class car for a total of $20.24.

Even when I put in various combinations of corp ID's and coupons on Autoslash, the best I can get it down to is $12.93/day, $26.19 a/i. Autoslash also confirms me into a compact car, and won't let me start/end my reservation at 30 minutes past the hour.

I know the $6 difference isn't much, but I pay for all my own travel so every little bit helps.
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