Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
This raises a number of questions:
1. Why is that - why are PL charging US renters more than German renters? The quote returned by Autoslash showed the lower price.
It's not actually Priceline, it's the rental companies. Rental companies file different rates for different "points of sale." Priceline just passes along the "point of sale" country (set by the driver's license field location) to the rental company, and the rental company returns the pricing.
As for how those rates are set by the companies--that's a bit of a black box.
Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
2. What happens if I pick the German license and lower rate, and then show up with my US license?
In general, you can select a US POS and show up with any driver's license and be fine. For better or for worse, a US POS is sort of a generic default that is honored regardless by all of the rental companies (maybe because most of their HQs are here in the US). The reverse isn't always true; if you book with a non-US POS and show up with a US license, they may deny you the rate.
Personally, I haven't seen a rate difference like this outside of the US. Usually, rates aren't different in Europe. However, rates in the US are often lower for non-US POS bookings, and not only that, non-US POS rates within the US often include bundled LDW+SLI, so it can be quite advantageous to reserve under a non-US POS. However, the rental companies can and will deny you the rate if you present a US license. We have seen and experienced this. I just haven't seen the same occur in Europe to date, but I would suggest exercising caution. YMMV.
Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
3. I have rented many times before in Germany and other European countries, but generally booked from the US, and so presumably it always defaulted to US. Would I have received better rates if I had teleported to Germany/France/Spain/… to make my booking?
Like I said, this is new to me personally (I'll have to check with others on the team to see if they've seen this in Europe), so I'm not sure. But it may be worth checking a non-US POS if you hold both licenses. You can change the POS when requesting a quote on our site (it's on the page where you enter your name/email address), and we'll factor that in and request rates from Priceline with both a US POS and the foreign POS and show whichever is lower. When you click through to book via Priceline, it will always default to the country you're accessing the site from (based on your IP address), but you can change it on their checkout page as you've discovered. So you don't need to teleport, but you can adjust it on both our end and Priceline's end.