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Luxury $15 less than Midsize

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Old Jul 13, 2019, 12:11 am
  #1  
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Luxury $15 less than Midsize

Booking for PHX next weekend, and the Luxury Car was priced about $15 per day less than the midsize. Talk about a no brainer! Anyone seen this before?
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Old Jul 13, 2019, 2:31 am
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Pricing is all done by algorithms and occasionally you'll see something like this. I had a reservation at Hertz once where a luxury SUV was significantly cheaper than a standard SUV.

Don't question it!
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Old Jul 13, 2019, 6:25 am
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Many business people need to rent a specific car size, such as mid-size, so it is quite possible that there is high demand for them, and less demand for nicer cars, making them cheaper.
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Old Jul 13, 2019, 8:26 am
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If your company contract is a flat rate, rather than a percent discount, to you, the midsize will always appear cheaper than luxury. In fact, it may even be the same price as economy or compact, and cars larger than full size may not even be presented to you at reservation. Retail rates, on the other hand, sometimes have anomalies, in part because of the standard corporate demand for midsize.
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Old Jul 13, 2019, 4:25 pm
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Originally Posted by Kacee
Booking for PHX next weekend, and the Luxury Car was priced about $15 per day less than the midsize. Talk about a no brainer! Anyone seen this before?
I had this before in ATL when the Delta IT outage happened. That said, the luxury selection was either QC50 or QC50.
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Old Jul 13, 2019, 4:48 pm
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Happens all the time with weekend rentals, Kacee. Scored an Audi A6 a month back for $20.03/day.
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Old Jul 13, 2019, 6:10 pm
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It is not uncommon to see a higher category vehicle at a lower price.
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Old Jul 14, 2019, 12:42 am
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Interesting. I've never noticed this level of pricing anomaly before. The Compact was also over $42/day, while I got Luxury for $29.68.

24 hours later, Luxury is now $78.44/day. Which leads me to believe this was a pricing error.
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Old Jul 14, 2019, 3:58 am
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I've been renting over weekends a lot in the 1st half of 2019, and it is not unusual to see very low prices. The $20.03 is exceptional, but a Midsize around $70-75 and Luxury below $30 is the rule, not the exception.

Reason 1 - as an Exec, Luxury costs me only what Premium costs everyone else.
Reason 2 - they have a pile of very nice cars that don't sell on weekends. They would rather get $30 per day than have them sit on the lot. "Why not just stick 'em on the Aisle, you say?" because if they do that, they have no idea when they will come back. If they go Emerald Reserve, they know it will be back Monday when they can rent it for $250/day.
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Old Jul 14, 2019, 7:59 am
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Originally Posted by Kacee
24 hours later, Luxury is now $78.44/day. Which leads me to believe this was a pricing error.
Definitely not. Rental car prices change by the minute. They're all dynamically priced now as well.

If it offered you the price and you successfully booked it, it's definitely not an error. Heck, I've gone back 3 minutes after making a reservation and the exact same itinerary has more than tripled in price.
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Old Jul 16, 2019, 5:06 pm
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What's fun is when you are trying to rent at a non-Aisle location and Luxury is $25 and Premium is $75. Then the web site wants to give you the Premium rate plus upgrade, and there is no way to get the Luxury rate unless you log out and book without your EC#.
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Old Jul 16, 2019, 6:38 pm
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Can't you book the next higher level (Elite?) at the Luxury rate?
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Old Jul 23, 2019, 2:58 pm
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Originally Posted by GateGuardian
I had this before in ATL when the Delta IT outage happened. That said, the luxury selection was either QC50 or QC50.
At PHX, there were two Q60s or a fully size Caddy. I took one of the Q60s. Didn't like it all. Did they get the driver interface from Renault??? Doesn't even have Apple Play. Can't imagine why anyone would buy one over an Audi or BMW. No wonder the National fleet is full of Infinitis - Nissan probably can't otherwise give them away.
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Old Jul 23, 2019, 3:09 pm
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Keep in mind the luxury car will use a lot more gas, so depending on how far you're driving you may not save any money in the end! (But at least you get to travel in style, I guess )
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Old Jul 23, 2019, 11:42 pm
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Originally Posted by Kacee
At PHX, there were two Q60s or a fully size Caddy. I took one of the Q60s. Didn't like it all. Did they get the driver interface from Renault??? Doesn't even have Apple Play. Can't imagine why anyone would buy one over an Audi or BMW. No wonder the National fleet is full of Infinitis - Nissan probably can't otherwise give them away.
Nissan is so bad at infotainment that they're giving up and handing it off to Google. All Nissan headunits will be Android-based by 2021.
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