I kind of thought you were still doing that, looking at your post about my CHS rental above ;) I did get the price drop, thanks!

+1 While acknowledging the responses, the site is pretty useless to me without incorporating alamo and budget which always have numerous coupons and FF bonus deals. Also I have never found the baseline prices to be any cheaper than orbitz. In short, the site does not provide me with any reason to use it.

Here's what would be valuable: inclusion of special rates (see e.g. IslandAir website which has killer rates for Hawaii) so that I don't have to scour multiple sites every time I rent a car. An updated list of all the discount and bonus codes for the agencies you cover. One stop shopping would make it a must-visit website. But you are not there yet.

I'll be making 2 Hawaii reservations on AutoSlash soon.

Oahu March 22nd to 27th
Big Island March 27th to April 6th.

Will report back with results.

Unfortunately, as mentioned in the New York Times article, it was Alamo and Budget that chose to prevent our customers from seeing their rates. Apparently they are not very pro-consumer companies. :(

As for the baseline prices: we must always show the same initial prices as any other travel agency (Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity) or the rental agency websites due to industry agreements. We actually ran afoul of this restriction in our early days, which is the main reason that Alamo and Budget pulled their rates and availability. We've since reformed, and we're waiting for Alamo and Budget to come back and show their consumer friendliness. :)

Right now, we're only helping customers sort through publicly-accessible, published discount codes. We don't have the infrastructure set up to allow customers to indicate whether they are members of AAA, USAA, Costco, AARP, etc., and we don't want customers to show up at the rental counter and have their discounts denied because they can't show a membership card for the requisite organization.

It's on our to-do list, though, so stick around and watch this thread for updates. :)

International ?
 

The above quote is from June 2010.
How is the this issue progressing - or is it resolved ?

I'm curious, since I just made a 14-day reservation over in Europe and have not received any feedback/results (yet).

International
 

Update: If you should ever receive a quote, it's not even remotely competitive for overseas - very disappointing to discover after the recent NYTimes article hype.

AutoSlash unfortunately did not work as well for me as I have hoped for Hawaii. I tried 3 reservations and ended up cancelling all 3 reservations, as I do not want to tie up vehicles for anyone who would need it within those time frames.

I shall continue to try out AutoSlash as I had a really good experience for my LAX rental over this past summer.

My experience has been the opposite. I particularly like the site for overseas rentals. I saved a lot of money in Greece using it, and will use it in Croatia. I almost instantly got a price drop on the Croatian rental that made it even more appealing.

I scan various online broker-sites, including major European ones and usually ask AutoEurope to match the price for the lowest price quote I receive.
This has worked well for many years and frequent rentals.
The quotes seem to vary by nationality and residency of the driver.

Autoslash tho - after 3 weeks ago giving initial (very high) quotes - has not even reacted on price drop requests for some 4 major European cities.

I cancelled all reservations with them and went with my usual broker :)

The New York Times hype may very well be the cause of the trouble you've had. The article increased traffic so much that we are still working through some of the backlog (although we're now very quickly catching up). We lost the ability to really fine-tune by hand the discounts on many reservations simply due to the volume (the joke around the office was that we were turning into the pricing monkeys on our introductory video :D).

We put our lead developer on NoDoz and had him spin up some significant improvements in the automation. A good chunk of what we were doing manually before the New York Times article has now been automated, and we're working to put the finishing touches on a significantly-improved back-end that will automate almost everything. That should both help you see your first price drop faster as well as make the regular ongoing price monitoring more robust and quicker to react to drops.

One note about AutoSlash versus AutoEurope: AutoSlash is not a prepaid broker. We help you find normal, non-prepaid rates and automatically search for public, legitimately-usable-by-everyone discount codes to help discount the rate further (support for us searching discounts through membership organizations like AAA and Costco is on the horizon). With AutoSlash, there is never a cancellation fee (even within a few days of scheduled pick-up), and you do not need to prepay anything or keep track of any vouchers.

Also, with the volatility inherent in the rental car market, non-prepaid rates may dip below the prepaid rates at any time, so while AutoEurope may show a lower price than you're getting with AutoSlash initially, that could (and most of the time does) change at any time. Note that in our experience, the volatility in rates often doesn't come into play until about 2-3 weeks before scheduled pick-up as the rental agencies start to have a firmer grasp on their projected fleet utilization and start competing with each other on rate. If you book 6 months out, you're not likely to see much in the way of price drops for awhile. Of course, we can only drop the price if the rental companies drop the price--if there's something going on in town that's causing the rental car agencies to sell out and prices to only go up, well, take solace in the fact that you got your car at the lowest rate between when you booked and when you picked up. :)

Also, keep in mind that the rates we show on your initial search are the regular retail rates--the rental companies won't let us pre-discount the rates. The magic happens after you book. In some cases, especially overseas, the selection of discount codes is a bit more limited, so you may not see a drastic price reduction immediately. Rest assured we're looking constantly for new discount codes and ways to help you save money.

You are always welcome to book reservations with us in parallel to your existing preferred vendors. Then, a few days before scheduled pick-up, simply cancel whoever has the higher rate. No risk! :)

I'm a Costco Executive Member, and 3 car reservations with the lowest prices are currently made on 3 islands with Costco travel.. I've got some minivan reservations made, none through Costco, but through Aloha Rents and similar. So will decide between either the full size car or minivan.

I'm a believer of AutoSlash, and hopefully IT can hone in getting the rates competitive accross the board. The price difference in Honolulu for a minivan was over $100 difference on a 5 night rental.

Getting the Costco feature and AAA will help.. I'm a member of both.

Keep in mind that just because a rate through AutoSlash may be higher than you can find elsewhere today, doesn't mean that will be the case tomorrow.

Rates fluctuate all the time. If you book and get an initial rate reduction and say, hey I can find lower elsewhere and then cancel, you may be missing out on savings. Since reservations are completely free on AutoSlash, there is absolutely no downside to letting things play out until right before your pickup date.

Many of our customers get an initial rate drop and then nothing for weeks or even months. Then a few weeks before the pickup date, the rate drops twice a day for a week straight, and they end up saving a bundle at the last minute.

Just sayin' :)

Yup.

You really have nothing to lose by giving AutoSlash the opportunity to deliver you the best price.

Think about it: what's the worst that can happen? You make your own reservation, thinking you can do better that AutoSlash, and then hedge your bets by also making one through AutoSlash. Later, you forget about the reservation that AutoSlash made (and, likely, subsequently discounted) for you. Oh, well. This is a car reservation, which will cancel without penalty if you no-show, not a non-refundable airplane ticket the non-use of which will cost you dearly.

Now, if you're nice, you'll cancel whichever reservation doesn't suit your fancy (or your wallet) in sufficient advance time to not cause the rental car company to keep a car in a slot earmarked for you. But if you don't, you'll have lost nothing other than the few minutes it took you to enlist the assistance of AutoSlash at the outset.

If its close then I'll keep it a bit longer to find out, but it was more than $100 out HNL.. and the Kona reservation was more than $300 out. I'm not the type to keep a reservation unless I know I'm going to use it.

Orlando: from SFB to I-drive drop off
 

It's been a frustrating experience to use Autoslash to search for a pick up at Sanford Int'l and drop off @ International drive around Seaworld. For example, thrifty has a location at the DoubleTree by Hilton Orlando (10100 International Dr. Orlando, FL 32821) and Hertz is at the Renaissance at SeaWorld (6677 Sea Harbor Drive Orlando, FL 32821). Nothing comes up on Autoslash for anything near these 2 addresses and defaults to MCO pickup and drop off.

Why doesn't Autoslash have Orlando car desks for touristy Orlando in its database? Orlando's I-Ride trolley website has a comprehensive listing, so it's not like the info is difficult to find.
[ http://www.iridetrolley.com/visitorI.../carRental.asp ]