pragakhan

Call and ask again? That will tell you if they keep call notes.. lol

SpeedRicer

Interesting -- maybe it depends on the rental pattern? In my case, I rent only on weekends with a somewhat irregular pattern (anywhere from 1-4x/month, with travel somewhere else in between), and GEICO said it would be fine. They did say that I would have to notify them if I was going to keep the rental for longer than 30 days, which sounds like the issue with "regular access?"

surfshadow

Anyone want to give any updates? This thread's been inactive for the last few months and my lease on my current car is coming up fast. Thinking of doing this for a short period to see how it goes before leasing/buying my next car.

bocastephen

Nothing to update - the process is still the same:

1. ensure you have full liability coverage (non owners policy or keep existing policy unless your car is gone) and some form of ongoing damage coverage via credit card

2. review the codes in the forum and find the code which you are eligible to use (or don't mind risking), without LDW (unless you have a fully eligible LDW code) and price out your weeks with the Sat stay coupon

3. decide how frequent you want to renew and which locations you can alternate to enhance your credit earning and minimize airport taxes

Tony King

One new thing to mention for me, I've primarily been renting out of LAS now. This location has many taxes/fees so the KLM contract ID is working best for this situation since it includes the majority of them. I signed up online to become a KLM Flying Blue member so I can use this code legitimately. This contract ID also includes LDW/SLI which should be good enough for insurance requirements.

Had a Jeep Cherokee out that my wife backed into an antique farming implement. Didn't damage the implement at all but put a nasty scuff and dent into the RR quarter panel and bumper. Went to the booth to do the damage report and nothing was questioned about qualifying for the KLM contract ID. I brought my membership info just in case. Never heard anything about the damage again.

piper28

I'll probably do a full update in about a month and a half, which for us would be the full school year that my wife has been doing it. But short answer is that it's tended to cost us a little more than I expected and I'm not entirely sure I'm completely satisfied with the cars we've been getting. That said, it's still viable enough for us that we're going to have to sit down and spend some serious time thinking about whether to continue doing it or not.

I'd have to say the car quality issue has been the biggest downer for me. For whatever reason, the location we tend to rent from (DTW) seems to be extremely crossover/suv happy on the ES aisle, which isn't something we normally want for most of our rentals (mainly because of gas mileage). At times it seems like the only sedans available are Altima's and Camry's, and in the rental trims, those are pretty depressing. If I could get something more along the lines of the Fusion's or Optima Hybrid's every month, I think that would be less of an issue. I'd seriously consider doing premium reservations because the cost difference is pretty insignificant once you're executive, but while I know one of the guys in the DTW thread told me where the premium aisle supposedly is there, there doesn't seem to be any signage, and I've never seen anything parked in that area that appeared to be from what usually would be considered premium. For all the locations that do seem to put the occasional premium car on ES, I've yet to run across one at DTW (but like I said, they're very crossover heavy, so for someone looking for something like that, they'd be pretty happy). (Actually, in fairness, we've seen a camaro twice on the ES, of course, once was in the middle of winter, when I wasn't really sure I wanted to try driving one around a lot, we had a lot of snow this last winter. Can't remember hte category for that off the top of my head, but at least it was something a little different).

I'm also getting pretty tired of cars that smell like smoke. I don't think National's doing enough to crack down on smokers smoking in cars. We've had a number of times when the best thing on the aisle was pretty badly polluted with smoke. Personally I think an appropriate punishment is chopping off the offenders hand or something. Has anyone ever heard of someone being fined for it?

We have actually had two incidents with cars in the last year, which for us is far more than normal, so in that, having a code that includes LDW has really paid off for us. Once I backed one of the cars into a fallen tree (entirely my fault), and the other we had the car stolen. Other than filling out an incident report (and some miscommunication issues on the stolen car and personal property that was in it), dealing with these has been pretty straightforward.

Wife's school year ends in mid-July, so I figure sometime in the couple weeks after that we'll spend some time really going over the numbers and assessing whether it's worth giving a try for another year or not. I'll post back here once we've done that with a further analysis of how things have gone for us.

One final thought. The Grand Cherokee that we own is about 20 months old and has about 20k miles on it now. I've *never* owned a car that we've averaged only 1k miles/month on. So there's very definitely also a factor for us that the residual value of that vehicle is going to be higher on it than we're used to. (I'd say most vehicles we've owned over the years we've tended to average about 20-25k miles a year on them.)

drzoidberg

How is the Fusion Titanium, piper?

It's been 3-4 years now of seriously renting at DCA. Fantastic selection of cars every week. I'd say I recoup at least half my costs by getting frequent flyer miles or hotel points.

piper28

Definitely like the Titanium, although after having driven it for a little longer, I'm pretty convinced it's been smoked in (although it's not nearly as bad as some of the other cars we've run across, this one is more just kinda at the edge of awareness, and might actually be new car plastic smell in the hot sun not smoke - looking at the New York stickers I think the car was probably new in April.). DTW had the windows down on all their cars when I was picking up this time, which makes it harder to identify the smoke smell. The Titanium is definitely a nice step up from the SE though.

If I was buying a sedan right now to replace the car that we're currently doing the renting for, there's a very good chance it'd be a Fusion. Course, then the next question would be how long would it last before it got stolen?

Between regular earning and the 1-2-Free days I do think we've picked up somewhere around 23 or 24 free days in the last year too, which isn't something to sneeze at.

IsleOfMan

I'd definitely do PCAR reservations once you're at Executive. This should get you out of the ES doldrums at DTW... at the very worst you should be in a Maxima or new Impala LT2, and it only gets better from there. My favorites PCARs are the Genesis, Cadenza, Taurus, Lacrosse, Azera, and then anything below that is pretty much equal (Avalon, Impala, 300) with the Maxima being at the bottom of the heap.

There's also a much higher likelihood that, given no PCARs available, you'll get bumped up to an LCAR or atleast a decent SFAR (I like the Grand Cherokees, but that might not be as exciting for you). I've had half a dozen LCAR/GXAR rentals on PCAR reservations in the last 12 months including Cadillac ATS, Infinity G37, a couple of Tahoes/Suburbans (only when I needed the space) and several Grand Cherokee Limiteds. The PCAR res would surely be my strategy if I were renting perpetually instead of owning.

pragakhan

I think the problem with the smoke is newer cars tend to take over the recirculation aspect of the HVAC regardless of what you think it is set it to. With some models it seems the only way to defeat this is to use the defrost setting which isn't ideal nor a guarantee.

As far as fining people, I have no clue how you would prove that. Someone could remotely start a car next to someone smoking and it is drawing in air, not recirculating, then your car will smell smoked in.

piper28

I've never seen a car that's had a sustained smoke smell from smoke from someone near the car. If it's in the car enough for the smell to last for a sustained period of time, I'm skeptical it was from smoke on the outside of the car.

I think part of the issue is that smokers just don't realize how badly it can linger in a car. Smoking wreaks havoc with the smelling (and tasting) abilities. I doubt the average smoker can even tell that a car has been smoked on, so probably assume that nobody else can either.

Sorry, didn't mean to sidetrack this on the smoking issue (which I know can get heated ). It was just something of an observation about the cars we've been experiencing.

xuni4everx

monthly rental @ont or sna is about $750 or more including tax. isnt this too much?
I wonder how much you guys are paying for a month?
i currently lease 528i 12000 miles for $1500 down and $539/36month.
$1500+19404+$4320($120 month/insurance)+ 1200 registraion (400*3years)=26424 There is $0 maintenance cost for BMW. $750X36=27000+ time.
It is still cheaper to lease than renting a car,also national doesnt do free upgrade, they always make me pay extra $25/day for Q50 or CTS.
I guess only benefit will be unlimited miles

pragakhan

Yeah, between 500 and 600 for me would be ideal. Anything more it wouldn't make financial sense and would only be justifiable by convenience.

But then if you consider free days and times when you are not renting, for me would be twice a month, the savings might equal out.

metsuck

I am currently renting from enterprise got a full size camry for 459 a month including taxes. any one have a better rate than that?

piper28

Keep in mind not all of us put so little mileage on a car. With my wife driving the rental car, this is the first time I've *ever* only averaged 1k miles a month. And I honestly can't even envision putting fewer miles on it than that, the people that do just must never drive anywhere or something. My wife's typically put about 2200 to 2500 miles a month on the rental car.

The last two cars we had we got rid of at about 189k miles (10 year old Grand Cherokee) and 220k miles (10 year old VW Passat).