Major limitation (or glitch) booking car rental at United.com
 

Reasons not to book a car rental at united.com aside....

When I go through the basic information of reserving a car I encounter one major and at least one minor problem:

http://www.united.com/web/en-US/apps...ar/search.aspx

Major:
-Although one selects the city to pickup the car, at no point during the reservation are you given a choice of location within the city. Using Avis, for example, in Los Angeles they have many (dozens) of locations. Yet, at no point during the booking process can you choose. Does it assume airport locations only???

Minor:
-The car types are listed (ie: full size, standard, etc.) but not other functions, such as automatic or manual. In the U.S. we take it for granted automatic is always available (default), but in other countries automatic transmission is less common and often priced at a premium.

Have others seen these problems?
Seems like that much more of a reason not to use united.com to book car rentals?

Update: When I click on taxes/fees, it shows airport taxes. So it seems a major assumption by United is that everyone booking a car on their website knows it is for airport locations only.

Since you're booking a car on an airline web site, LAX in L.A. is probably why that is the only location option to pick up the car.

I've NEVER been given a stick shift in the U.S.

Just book it somewhere else and don't fight it!

The question I have is why wouldn't you? If you book through one of UAMP's bonus offers, you can get a fair amount of extra miles...and when I log on to AVIS' website, the bookings all appear in my AVIS First account...same as if I had booked through AVIS, but an extra 600-700 miles...multiply that by 50 and you got some miles....

I've never seen UA's web site for booking cars cheaper than going straight to the rental car sites using a discount code which can be found in another forum.

If your company is paying, you want the miles, and don't care what the cost is use UA. If you're paying - shop around!

Remember, nearly EVERYTHING UA offers has hooks! Falling for the "Extra Miles" trick can be costly, especially if your using your own dime!

You can always use the UA MP discount code directly on the rental car agency's site. I do this all the time.

Interesting. I usually use National, but for the next several weeks, UA had a bonus offer where renting from them and getting 35% off + extra miles was no more than from the Avis site directly (I tried) and it was quite a bit less than National...I think this might be a classic YMMV situation.

I use Avis a lot. If it's one of those times I'm renting from a non-airport location, I use their website, otherwise I use ua.com so "tied" to my flight.

I'm not sure "no advantage whatsoever" applies in all cases.

They often run promos for bonus miles booking directly through their website. They also run promos if you are an elite member. This on top of the daily rate (ie: 200-300 miles per day now on Avis). A 3-day rental nets around 1000 miles. Priced the same, why not book thru ua.com?

Though the point of the thread was not to discuss advantages/disadvantages, but that the site is not clear where in a given city your car is to be picked up from. It implies airport locations only, but does not explicitly state it

If you're travelling on OPM, then booking a car thru United may make sense, but generally, the extra money paid for the miles is a really bad deal compared to rates you get elsewhere. If I'm spending my own money, I would never rent a car through United (or use RocketMiles, etc).

I have noticed when booking through Hertz the cost on United is higher, and I am never on the gold board when booking through United. I would always have to go inside and find where my car is, which takes away a benefit of Hertz gold... so I don't use it anymore.

My corporate contract with Avis gives us a killer rate but precludes us from getting miles for it. I'll just continue to use Avis ...

Thanks!

Not sure if you read my follow up post...I did comparison shop and the rate was the lowest one available relative to booking directly with either AVIS or National. Could I have gotten a slightly lower rate through booking blind on hotwire? Maybe, but then it'll take me much longer to pick up and return the car etc...

Unless the terms of the car rental offer specify that you get bonus MP mileage by booking through UA.com, and you want those points, there is no necessity to book trough UA.com. One can enter the same discount code from UA into the car rental website.

How much per day was it? I'm paying less than $35/day (plus taxes of course) for a full size with unlimited miles ... Can't imagine it's better than that.

What dates, what drop off point etc? Impossible to compare rates without specific.