CDTraveler

Okay, after 3 months of diligent hunting, we got just the right combo of flight times and airfare for our summer trek.

Now I'm trying to find a reasonable rental car rate - and the early quotes I'm getting for July @RDU are waaaaaaaay too high - $250+++/wk for an economy car?! Is there something comparable to farealert.com or farecompare.com for cars that will alert to me changes/trends in the rates for rental cars?


(moderators, not sure where this question belongs, so please move if appropriate)

the_traveler

What I do is to check a site like orbitz, expedia or travelocity for rates. They usually list many car rental companies. (That way I can tell that Thrifty is $30 while Avis is $50 and Hertz is $55 for the same type.) Then, if you want, you can go to their rental site.

This is the same as I do for airfares. (I'm not loyal to one airline.) Then I go to the airline's site.

YMMV.

goldrush3

One problem is that you are booking very far in advance...not only will prices change, but there will be discounts and coupons available in a few months that will be good for your trip dates, that are not available yet.

What I would do is find the lowest and reserve it. Use travelocity then book it with the rental company's website. I say that because sometimes sites like travelocity make you pay for the reservation up front, and that will be a problem. Or just use the research you've already done. Then keep looking as your trip gets closer and I would be surprised if you didn't find some sort of discount or coupon that will bring the price down. Then make the new reservation and cancel the old one. You can keep doing this until you leave or when you find a comfortable price...its all up to you.

myfrogger

First off...$250/week is not really that expensive for renting a car. Even with my corporate rates, I would say that my average cost is about that. I consider a great price $175/wk. If I get to areas like Dallas, for example, I tend to spend $500+ per week at times.

It is good advice to book a reservation. You could even go about booking a reservation with a few companies. Then monitor the rates about once every week (more often when you get closer) and the rates will likely go down. This almost always seems to happen unless I'm traveling on a high demand week/weekend.

Good luck

jtkauai

have you tried the discount codes often found on our rental car forums? i often use the costco, entertainment and aarp codes, among others.

UNITED959

I always use Orbitz -- the matrix display is great.

CDTraveler

I guess what I'm looking for wasn't clear enough. I know how to manually search for the best rate - but I want something automated to alert me to rate changes or sales or price trends. Anything like that exist?

myfrogger

No automated search is going to do exactly what you want unless you want because the car rental market is totally different than the airline ticket market.

If you really want to save money you need to put in the time to find the deal. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Cheers

cblaisd

You might take a look at www.kayak.com

myfrogger

Kayak still requires you to manually work. As far as I know there is no automated way to run the searches (every hour, every day, every week, etc).