Just to follow up, my rental went flawlessly. No problems on pickup, nor even having both my wife and I listed as drivers with our US licenses.

My strongest recommendations for usrentacar.co.uk if you want to rent a car in the US for 1/2 the price (or less) of booking it locally.

I checked a weekly rental in SJC on the UK site, and compared it to what I booked a couple of days ago. The UK site was twice as expensive. fwiw.

I am glad to hear that as I also have a huge discount if I precise my French nationality (which I have plenty of means to prove if required). But I am puzzled with this part of the reservation :

How taxes can be at 0 ? The rate is interesting but seems not to include taxes. BUT, it clearly says "taxes included". How can they skip the taxes ? I could understand some kind of "duty free", selling a service to a non-citizen, but there are plenty of airport / location related taxes (pick up at SFO).

Anyone has known the same situation and could give me a hint ?
Thanks !

The $114.60 includes the taxes. When you pick-up the car, the contract will break it down to say for instance 4 days @ $25 per day, 4 days of tax A @ $2 per day, 4 days of tax B @ 50 cents per day, etc. For LDW and SLI, it'll say "accepted" at $0 per day.

same story here as I found a crazy price on www.budget.co.uk for our period in summer.

The car I booked has the following conditions:
* unlimited free miles
* rate code BB
* taxes included
* Supplemental Liability included
* Loss Damage Waiver included
* 30 day maximum rental allowed

I booked it as it can be canceled until the last moment.

I have the following questions:
* do I miss any insurances in the package above?
* the reservation is in GBP, how will that work out at the time of pickup in US Dollars?

I have some nasty experiences in picking up rentals and confronted with all kinds of "you miss this an that in your reservation" and I want to avoid this if possible....

"* rate code BB *"
Oh-so-cool! My nickname is Double-B !

Seriously, U probably don't need any more coverages, such as on Personal Effects or contents.

Other protection options may be available (personal accident insurance/personal effects coverage, uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage, etc.), and you may find some of them to represent a value to you, but none of them will be required purchases.

As for USD vs GBP, I'm not sure. You haven't prepaid this reservation? IME, most of these bundled all-inclusive deals are prepaid, but then again, I'm far less familiar with the Budget variant of these kinds of bookings.

If you didn't prepay, I would suspect that the rate loaded in the Budget computers is the USD equivalent of whatever you booked in GBP as of the wholesale (or near-wholesale) exchange rate on the date you made the reservation. The rate is going to be loaded in the computer at the Budget location as a USD rate, and since once the reservation is entered in the system, it isn't touched unless you do something to update the reservation, there's no real way it could be changed to anything different than what it was when you booked it.

You might be able to use this to your advantage by rebooking the reservation if the exchange rate changes; assuming you find the same price in GBP when you attempt a rebooking, if the USD's value has increased relative to the GBP, then the equivalent rate that will be loaded into the US-based reservation system will be lower, since the total in USD has to equal the total in GBP.

Don't take the above as gospel, though; I'm merely speculating based on my experiences with another brand (that very well may do things substantially differently).