Crazy UK vs US resident price difference..?
 

I am looking at doing a one way rental from Union Square, San Francisco to Reno/Tahoe airport as part of a trip to CA next week. I'm a UK resident.

Selecting the above on budget.com gives me a price for a Compact vehicle of £58.29 (~$87). It also includes unlimited mileage, LDW, SLI and £0 drop off fee.

This looked too good to be true to me so I tried the same but this time selecting that I was a US resident.

This time, price is $344 + LDW + SLI = $416.29 (~£279).

What is going on here? I'm no stranger to market pricing but 1/5th of the price?? FWIW all the UK travel sites show the same lower UK price so it doesn't look like a budget.com only error.

What happens when you book as a UK resident for a rental in the US which is quoted in £? do they simply exchange on the day?

I'm obviously worried about going to pick the car up and the agent laughing at the quote and getting stung for the full US price with no time to change plans...

Any advice? is this commonplace?

thanks.

Not an exact answ to your q, but....:
As a UK resident you can generally get quite good deals.
If you book your Budget car via USrentacar or another of the brokers you'd get an even better price than you got from Budget's own website (and with exactly the same insurances).

The following thread explains a little bit more:
http://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=258981


S.

With other rental co.s esp. Avis, I find that the UK resident price is often much higher because it includes automatic LDW on the assumption that very few British credit cards offer such coverage & British auto insurance may not cover US car-hires.

I say grab that 58-pound rate! The worst they can do is ask for your British passport or driving licence to prove that UR entitled to that rate.

I am a dual national US/British and hold driving licenses in each country and credit cards in each country.

Whenever I need a US car rental I will always check the UK price - I would say in 8 out of 10 bookings, the UK price is less than the US price - mostly due to the insurances.

Grab that low rate while its there mate !!!

I also noticed HUGE difference in prices. I'm a finnish resident and plan to rent 2 weeks from Tampa.

Fullsize for 2 weeks includes LDW and SLI automatically and is 598$ for finnish resident. Same options for US resident is 1344$. With luxury class the prices are 774$ / 2021$.

Compared to other rental companies the prices are several hundreds cheaper. I hope this is true :D

I also found out the exact same thing. Rates for non residents are much better especially if you factor in the insurance. You can also try http://www.carrentals.co.uk
It gives you the lowest rates and comparisons between several providers.

Have you ever been asked to show UK passport or UK residency proof when you picked up the car? I am planning to book a car from UK budget website but I am not a UK resident.

Expedia UK
 

I just found the same thing. I'm a US resident and will be traveling to Germany (Frankfurt) around Memorial Day. All compact cars were at least $300, up to $400+. I found Travel Super Market, which showed a low rate at Expedia UK. Just got a compact car (~Golf) for 5 days for 151 Pounds, which translated to about $238 US. That includes all taxes, fees, damage waiver, etc.

Reviving an old thread...

Are there any US residents out there that have rented a car through these guys (usrentacar.co.uk) ? Did it work ? Their FAQs seem to offer conflicting advice as to whether it's possible. Eg:

Question: I am a UK resident if I book a car in florida will my US friends be able to drive it also?

Answer: If you book with our Budget supplier they will allow a driver with a US or Canadian driving lisence but they have to be the lead driver, and they will only allow 1 per vehicle, Alamo and Dollar will not allow a US driver on their vehicles.

and

Question: I have had my US drivers licence for 20 years and i'm a US citizen, can i rent a car?

Answer: You can book with our Budget supplier, but they can only allow 1 US driver on a booking and they have to be the lead driver.


I am an Australian citizen currently living the US, so I suppose I can use my Oz driver's license if necessary - but I'd prefer to use the US one so as to not complicate things should anything go wrong (accident, vehicle damage, etc). With that said, specifying an Australian license also opens up other booking options that are a couple of hundred $$ cheaper.

In short, have any US residents (either citizens or aliens) booked a car through usrentacar.co.uk, and if so, did it work ?

Never via that particular site, but looking at Dollar and Thrifty's own UK sites, I've noticed the T&C have no specific prohibition on a US resident reserving a car via those sites.

Since I often take the rental company's coverage and it's far cheaper to book via the UK-based prepaid sites, I've been tempted in the past to reserve through one of those sites and get the whole bundle for less than booking directly as a U.S. citizen. I have not yet gotten the courage up to try, however...

Hertz &or Avis have a clause in their T&Cs that anyone who books on a foreign Website may be required to show proof either that they live permanently in the country of the Website or at least were there when they reserved the car. I've no clue on how often they enforce this.
I tried a few years ago to book car rentals on British Websites. Usually they wanted a higher price than US Websites + LDW was automatic/ mandatory, so I guess that few UK credit cards offer intl. coverage. Also prepaid in pounds which meant a 3% forex fee for me back then.

Isn't it a bit like EU rail passes? People from outside Europe pays only 1/3 of the train fare compare to EU residents. It's annoying but what can you do?

Well, I've just booked a car through for a skiing week in CO, I'll report back here on how it goes.

With regards to using my US license, I called and was told I'd have to use Budget as the supplier. This increased the cost by about 30%, but was still half the price of booking the same vehicle directly with Budget locally. They were happy for me to pay with a US-bank-issued VISA card, though their online site wouldn't process that - I had to call (that problem may have been independent).

I've done the .co.uk thing several times and never had any problems collecting the car. That being said, EVERY time, the agent was clueless how to pull up the reservation including, correct rates on the contract, coverage being included, applying coupons, etc. (I posted a thread a while back about getting different prices when you try and view your res online). I always get the pitch that "Coverage 'may or may not be applicable in the event of a loss, regardless of what the contract says.'" Every time I spend 10-15 minutes arguing with the rental agent, giving them the entire reservation (all ~5 pages of printouts), and waiting for them to figure out what to do. It works out, but it's a royal pain.

How to avoid outrageous exchange rates?
 

I have sort of the opposite issue ... I'm a resident of Switzerland and have no residency in the US. I don't regularly check different rates, but didn't find any differences between the Swiss and the US rates when I occasionally checked the rates.

However, and this is my real issue, Budget now also starts charging me in CHF rather than USD when I rent a car in the US. I wouldn't mind if the exchanges rates weren't outrageous ... but because they are, I do actually mind (the "surcharge" is usually between 10 to 15 percent against the normal credit card rate). I can see USD rates on budget.com, but once I push the reservation button all goes into CHF. I can't find any way how I can get a quote in USD unless I wrongly specify my residency as the US.

Any help with this exchange rate issue?