SimpleManToo

I dont rent a car all that much in the US and really dont want to pay 30 to 35,000 points for two nights just to get one. I would like to get some suggestions on ways to lower my cost (other than priceline) in renting a car. I am going to need a compact or midsize for four days total over memorial day weekend in the US.

Any one have some good suggestions on promotions, coupons or ways not to use up tons of accumulated hotel/airline points? I am member of HH, PC, MR and DL.

sdsearch

Can you be more specific about where you want to rent, and what sort of prices (with money) you're getting?

In my experience, using points/miles for rentals is a bad deal. Points/miles work in hotels and airlines when they have "excess inventory", but rental places don't tend to have the same issue (they can move cars around between facitilies, they way hotels can move rooms from one city to another and airlines can't move seats from one plane type to another).

Any redemption of points/miles other than for hotel rooms or airline seats, in fact, tends to be bad, because most other redemption choices (not just rental cars) are not making use of excess inventory and thus are pricing out at no better than a "1% cashback" (had you earned the miles from a credit card) rate, and often even way worse.

Meanwhile, back to paying: In my experience, the price you'll get today is not the best price, but you need to make a reservation at some point to "lock in" a "worst" case. But, at Avis, you can keep modifying the reservation any time you see the rates go down. (You may have to change to a different car type, confirm the new rate, change back to the original car type, confirm the new rate, because sometimes the web site won't take a new rate for the same car type in one step.) I've very often found that within a week or two of my rental, the rates go down, and then a couple days before my rental, they shoot way up. I've found it worthwhile thus to check increasingly often as the rental date approaches. The worst that can happen is that you don't find any better rate than your initial one.

One more suggestion: Are you flying on this trip? Have you booked the air portion yet? Sometimes you can get an excellent deal on a rental car by buying a "vacation" from the airline, where the vacation consists of just the flight and the rental car (no hotel purchase as part of the reservation needed). I've done this once through AA Vacations, and in that case, the rental came with all coverages included even though it was cheaper than renting separately (which wouldn't have included any coverages, though in the US I'm covered both through my Diners Club card and through my regular car insurance). The only issue is that you have to prepay everything, so it doesn't work well if you have to do it in a situation where you're not sure of the exact dates/times and/or you might have to cancel. But you generally have to prepay the airline portion anyway, so if the rental car is "almost free" as part of the "vacation" package, it's not much more that's being prepaid.

SimpleManToo

Points are a terrible value for renting cars. That is out of the question after I heard 30-35K for 2 nights.....geez

I am looking at a Friday till Monday Rental in one of three different cities: Salt Lake City, Boise Idaho or Sacremento California and Im not sure which yet. I havent seen any major price cuts but the suggestion to keep trying until you get a good rate is a good idea if the rates go down. So far I've only been getting high rates, 35 to 42 dollars a night and I want something lower.

ratatouille

Have you tried HOTWIRE ? They are better than Priceline in that you will get the lowest price but wont know which Car rental comany until you make the purchase. Otherwise Thrifty seems to have pretty low prices compared to the majors like Avis or Hertz.

dd992emo

In metro areas like Sacramento and SLC, $35-$42 per day is a pretty good rate. You could maybe do better with PL or Hotwire.

Mrp Alert

Wirelessly posted (FlyerTalk.com/wap is fun : BlackBerry8330/5.0.0.438 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/389)

Baseline maintains a great website called autoslash.com. While it does not reserve Avis, it can help a novice user get a very good rate on a car rental. I use it when I am not in the mood to do any research and I'm a very very frequent expert car renter.