Getting around Hertz's overpriced rentals
 

I did some searching on these forums to see if anyone had posted about this year, and I couldn't find anything. If they have, and I missed it, I apologize for being redundant, but I just wanted to share this 'trick' I discovered with you all.

I'm a Hertz *5 member, and so whenever I book a car, I naturally just do it through their website. Normally I don't care what the price is because I'm expensing it through my company anyway. But when I went to rent a car, at the last minute, for a personal reason, I was really irritated at the high rates that were showing up on Hertz's website. So, just to see what was out there, I went onto Orbitz and looked for rentals at the same location. Sure enough, Hertz rentals showed up but were half the price they were on Hertz's website. Obviously that is no surprise to anyone.

The trick was that after booking the rental through Orbitz, I phoned up Hertz and played dumb, pretending that I couldn't figure out why my Hertz Gold number wasn't applied to this rental. I gave the woman my reservation number and my Hertz gold number and she said "oh I see you booked this through Orbitz... well that's no problem, I'm adding your Gold account to this rental so you're good to go". And bam, got credit for that rental with my gold account and only paid half price.

Anyone else experience or try something like this?

Do you have your company's CDP in the profile when you're on Hertz.com? I've found that I can almost always find a better deal through Hertz.com than through any other source through a variety of PC codes & CDPs that I'm eligible for.

The other thing I like is that I get the service & can cancel free of charge whenever I want to. Isn't Orbitz prepaid?

It's been discussed quite a few times, there's probably something in your profile that's causing the higher rate.

Try getting a price not logged in at all and when logged in. If the logged one is higher, there's a chance there's something in your profile causing it (I say a chance because I don't believe it's the reason 100% of the time)

Not really sure why you have to call Hertz when making an Orbitz reservation, you can add your Hertz number to the reservation on Orbitz.

I agree! I have access to 10 CDP's and one will always be lower than the going rate, even on Christmas day!

I believe it is something in someone's profile 100% of the time - I have never come across a situation where the price is different, except where the settings in my profile affect the rate. Those that claim there is something funny going on have never provided enough details to evidence this.

I sometimes find that when I book through the AAA website, I can find a lower rate than what appears on the Hertz website (with the AAA rate code). Nice thing is that I can enter my Gold number on the AAA website and after I make the reservation, the Hertz confirmation number will appear on the AAA confirmation and I can pull up the reservation on the Hertz site.

Same as ebuck - AAA website prices always seems to be less than or equal to the Hertz website price with the AAA discount. And I have not found that there is any disadvantage to booking through the AAA site.

Thanks for the tip! Seems to be much cheaper this way! Rates much lower, by 15% or so.

One of my complaints with Hertz for personal rentals is that I have to try various websites (Orbitz, AAA, and hertz.com itself) and then the smorgasbord of CDPs for which I'm eligible to find a decent rate.

And then I have to apply various PCs.

And then I have to hope the contract prints properly at the gate whilst exiting when I have another car or two waiting behind me.

Some really great advice so far. Thanks guys. But I'm curious about the quote above. Can you give an example of something in your profile that would raise your rates? I have some United CDC codes that are supposed to give me a discount.

Country of residence for one; rental rates and discount given by some CDPs are affected by country of residence

Another is preferences for items such as CDW; in UK, for example when my profile said to not include such items, the rates were much higher since the cheap rates offered by Hertz included CDW and so were not offered

I've never had any site other than the AAA one occasionally come out cheaper than Hertz.com. Sometimes the CDPs can give odd rates though, so you may have to check multiple CDPs to find one that's reasonable. I usually check AAA, USAA and 706900. Between those I either find one that's somewhat better than the others, or I find that they're all bad and I might look for someplace other than Hertz. (More recently, the latter has been the case, although this past weekend I got a better rate from Hertz picking up Saturday and dropping Tuesday morning for 3 days than I did with any others picking up Sunday for 2 days or Saturday for 3 days.)

I use Orbitz occasionally to get a quick grid of different company rates, but I've never seen the Hertz rate be lower there. For that to be the case, I'd have to think Hertz.com is choosing something in your profile making the rate higher.

Interesting. I do decline automatically all the insurance options, GPS navs, and the like. But my country of residence is here in the states, and umm... well... I can't think of anything else in my profile that would make it higher. Maybe because my preference is set to mid-sized cars?

When I booked this trip on Orbitz, it was a one-way trip from some middle-of nowhere Hertz in New Hampshire, to another kind of middle-of-nowhere Hertz at an airport in Westchester County NY. And it was literally 50% of what Hertz was quoting on their website.

Maybe just a fluke?:confused:

Could be. The one-way trip is interesting, I could see that throwing things off. I haven't priced many one-ways, and I can't remember ever comparing that vs Orbitz.

Generally I have a sort of limit where if I get what feels like a reasonable price I'll stop, even if I might not have exhausted all options. What's been happening in recent months though, more often than not, is that none of the prices seem that reasonable....

Gotta love AAA.com
 

For example a IAD Economy/Compact rental over this coming weekend

Hertz.com = $27/day
AAA.com (member) = $16/day
AAA.com (non-member) = $18/day

I know! I love the AAA website. I'm paying less than $20/day for a full size. Hope it continues! :)