fayewolf

Yep, I will. Thanks

Now for the car rental, i called national and they quote me $800 plus tax , and i told them Hertz has $359 plus tax and they wouldn't match. any thoughts?

Earthlings

Are they airport locations or local locations? That might be a price difference. Might not get lower mileage cars, but might be cheaper.

fayewolf

No, this is with a local branch. The price difference is dramatically different. Hertz is 399 including tax!

SpeedRicer

Have been doing this for a few years as I'm a traveling consultant (back at home from Thursday night to Sunday night).

It works out nicely since I pick up/drop off at airport and therefore most clients agree to cover it as ground transportation since it replaces taxi costs (and is cheaper). I usually use a free day coupon code that is available for weekend rentals to keep the costs down as well.

I have a named-non-owner policy from GEICO which covers the liability as others have mentioned, but it also covers comprehensive/collision as well, negating the need for LDW. It's about $35/month all-in. Some clients include LDW/liability on their contracts for personal use too, so in these cases, the insurance becomes secondary anyway (so then you don't have to worry about any deductibles).

piper28

Ugh, my plan for getting both my wife and I to executive before the end of this year kinda backfired on me. We've been alternating the one month rentals we're doing, and there was just enough time for both of us to have that second month rental to push us over the 40 day mark. Would have worked perfectly, but we just got the receipt for our latest rental emailed to us (we've got this one for a couple days past 31, so the receipt comes on the 31 day mark), and apparently this last rental contract ended up under her account instead of mine. I figure I'll bring it up when I return the car, but I'm guessing there's not likely to be much they can do about it, especially on the local level. Odd, because the reservation was definitely under my account, not my wife's. Obviously we didn't pay enough attention to the contract when we swapped cars to realize that it was under the wrong name.

Also kinda odd, that meant that that would have been a back to back rental for my wife, so I wouldn't have thought that the days would have qualified for status for her, but she did get bumped up to elite. Unfortunately for us, it would have worked better for us both to be executive rather than one being elite and one being normal.

I figure I'll try emailing National to ask if there's anything they can do about it, but not really expecting a lot of success. I am looking forward to the idea that while we're gone for a couple weeks we're not actually paying for that second car though (and even better, we don't have to worry about her old car we got rid of starting, it tended to die if it sat for a week or so).

GTXgp

I have kicked this around a few times, but the logistics keep eluding me. I can rent from DFW monthly for only $549, but the taxes and fees from renting at the airport add another $400! The only way I can figure out to fix this is to rent for one day from DFW (to get ES) and then drive 30min to Plano and do the 1-month from Plano. This reduces the taxes/fees to $100ish but is much less convenient than "pick up/drop off" at the airport.

I'm assuming that most people who are doing this either have more reasonable airport fees or a more accessible local branch?

bocastephen

I do the same 30 minute commute to my local branch to start my rentals, but I always do them one week at a time to get the extra $30 weekly coupon discount, which saves about $120 per month - it's a hassle, but it keeps the monthly cost down.

SpeedRicer

Not sure if all airport locations do it, but SAN usually drops all of the airport-related taxes/fees for me if I'm not arriving by flight (my Emerald Club profile lists a local San Diego ZIP code). So basically, I do a weekend or one-day rental from SAN (for which I do have to pay taxes since I arrive by flight), then I drop the same car back at SAN and start a new rental after that without the fees, for the week, month or however long I need it.

DistressedAssetInvestor

I just noticed this thread today like 8 months late. I've been renting exclusively for the past 10 years, mostly from National. The factors that made the choice easy when I started and allowed me to continue are as follows:

I am/was located in Canada
Insurance rates are higher than U.S.
Car purchase prices are about 15%+ compared to the U.S.
Sales taxes are higher in Canada.
My offices were smack downtown next to subway, railway and car rental locations so I could switch modes.
Assuming an average of $40 per rental day, and average 120 days, probably ran up $5000/year
Assume another $1500 for cabs
Assume another $1000 for public rail.

So on the surface, it looks like probably a couple thousand dollars more per year than owning a car.

And the key disadvantage is simply inconvenience and maybe extra 150+ hours of time spent on logistics of returning cars. This was much easier to justify when I started this at age 27 with less to do. Nowadays, renting fulltime is a requirement due to my heavy global travel.

The advantages specific to my situation:

Being self-employed, I get a business tax reduction. (Est. 20% of spend)
No car maintenance and repair costs. (Est. $800+/- yr)
No insurance cost. ($2500/yr)
Can often avoid paying for parking at expensive downtown location or at airport simply by returning the car.
Rent appropriate vehicle class for need (e.g. SUV for snowboarding trips)
Relatively new cars (usually less than 1 year old since when they see you so often they try to treat ya better)

And knowing myself, if I ended up purchasing a car, I think I wanted to buy an Audi R8 when it first came out...which has since morphed to a Aston Martin, or at least a fully loaded Audi S5 or Porsche SUV. So my procrastination is so far saving me maybe another $150k!!! Everytime the great staff at Union station Toronto don't see me for more than a couple weeks, they think I've finally bought a car... but haven't so far....

bigshooter

Just felt like chiming in here since I did the renting without owning thing for about 15 months. I have contacted most of the large insurance companies (Progressive, Aflack, Geico, State Farm, All State) and the only one that might be able to cover a long term rental with a named non owner policy is State Farm. My local agent is actually double checking to make sure I won't run into any issues with that policy in the future, but every other company (am actually on hold with Geico right now) states that named non owner policies are for people without regular access to a vehicle. If you had to file a claim and the insurance agency somehow determined that it was on a rental that you had out for an extended period they may not cover you. Progressive actually did that to me in February (during an inquiry not a claim) and it's why I own a vehicle now. If you break the rentals up with a week in between now and then and keep it to less than 30 days I assume you could hide it though.

If anyone reading this has a liability policy on a long term rental and has ever successfully made a claim can you post on here or message me?

Tedgrrrr

Do you fly into DFW? Or do you just go there to pick up a car? I recently found out at LGA that if you sign a statement saying that you were in NYC for 18 hours prior to picking up your car that you save all the airport taxes!!! In your case, you could save $400, assuming DFW has a similar tax exemption for those who don't fly in!!

MuscleNerd

I wonder if that would work for ORD. I'm a chicago resident and i would love to by pass all the airport tax.

nyctoatl

Anyone know if you can do that in Atlanta also?

xienon

I believe this is because the National LGA location is off airpoart property. I've tried to ask at the Hertz and Avis locations on airport property and this can't be there.

worldfreqtrav

I've been kicking this idea around for a while now and decided to pull the trigger. I currently have Geico and my first step was to inquire about their NNO policy. I told them that I'll be selling my only car and that I'll be renting for a while. They then asked me, for how long I plan to rent, I replied "for about six months or so." They then proceeded to tell me that this is considered "regular access" to a vehicle and that they can not offer me an NNO policy. They said that they cannot offer this policy for a rental term longer than 30 days. Even after explaining to them that I'll be getting a new contract every 30 days or less they said that this is still considered "regular access."

The others on here that have the Geico NNO policy seem to also have "regular access" to a vehicle. It also seems that most people who have the NNO policy and permanently rent could be in breach of Geico's "regular access" terms. Is there something that I'm not understanding?

Any insight is greatly appreciated.