Learned something about rental car pricing today…

I'm the kind of guy that really prefers walking up to a counter and dealing with a salesperson to buy stuff. Ordering online annoys me. 
 

I'm gonna be in the NY area for a few days, and need a rental car. Of course, I need to reserve online. That's ok. I like easy. Online ordering is supposed to be easy. 
 

I was on a couple of the travel sites. Mostly because I was just trying to make it a little easier.  I don't mind paying a premium for a little ease. 

After an hour and a half, it's not so easy. Just frustrating. Sites that crash, checkouts that don't work, the list is endless. 

But the price is what knocked me out. $1152 for a 3 day rental was the best I could find. My wife chided me for "waiting until the last minute". I figured I was screwed. 
 

Then I decided to check Hertz' site directly (instead of the generic travel sites). Less than half price. What?  The travel sites are charging double??

Then I looked harder.  I guess Hertz is having trouble renting electric cars. The Tesla was less than half the price of other cars. 

$212 for three days out the door with all the charges.  Looks like I'll be driving a Tesla while I'm in NY.

I saved $1000.  Also looks like I will stop caring about convenience, and start planning on spending time shopping around when buying online.

So much for easy. 

It's one of the cats that Hertz has a lot of... 

https://electrek.co/2022/03/23/hertz-adds-tesla-model-y-fleet/

Rental car companies make a lot of dollars in convenience fees/charges if gas cars are returned with empty or low gas tanks. 

What's the policy for EVs returned low?  I'd be curious to hear. 

Why the hell WOULDN'T you rent a Tesla? Road trip, sure, but in a city, doing touristy things? All day, all day.

Appleseed said:

Why the hell WOULDN'T you rent a Tesla? Road trip, sure, but in a city, doing touristy things? All day, all day.

I would have assumed it would be significantly more expensive and wouldn't have even considered it.  Now I know, though!

John Welsh said:

Rental car companies make a lot of dollars in convenience fees/charges if gas cars are returned with empty or low gas tanks. 

What's the policy for EVs returned low?  I'd be curious to hear. 

I wonder... I bet you could charge a similarly inflated rate and have it still be cheap enough many wouldn't bother to charge. Charging $20 for $2 worth of electricity pays the same as charging $70 for $52 worth of gas? I haven't read the rental gas policies lately, so I don't know if I'm in the ballpark on my example...

Interesting.  I generally like booking direct with Hertz, but we're flying into LGA thursday and out JFK Sunday of this week and I found Turo to be much much cheaper.  I'm at around $300 total for a GLS and Hertz was $500 for an economy car.  If I was on the company card it would be different, but I'm just headed to MTK with the wife.  

I'd rent a tesla as long as the distance I was going could be completed safely in less than one charge. 

In general, don't mess with the third party sites for cars or air travel. If there is a problem and you used Expedia or something, then you will have way more hassles than if dealing directly with the vendor. In my book, it isn't worth the (normally) small savings.

Also, just walking up to the counter to rent a car is one of the worst strategies you can have. Book in advance, there are rental car shortages right now, and you are likely to be out of luck if you don't have a reservation. If you do just walk up to the counter, it's unlikely that you are going to save any money.

I travel all the time for work, so I know what I speak of.

22 years ago I reserved a rental car for a two week drive to Yellowstone and back. Got confirmation, arrived to pick it up:

Them: Sorry, we don't have any of those.

 Me: So what was the purpose of renting on line?

Them: Sorry.

They had a month to get the model car on the lot that we asked for, didn't, and didn't bother letting us know. After a freakin' hour of back and forth it went something like

Them: Okay, we can give you a free upgrade to this other car

Me: Okay

Them: We don't have any of those

Me: Okay, so...

Them: we can upgrade you from that car to this other one, that we do have.

So while the whole exchange was mystifyingly comical, we ended up with a Lincoln Towncar for the price of a compact.

I'm quite happy that my company has a deal with National for set price rates for personal use.  $36/day gets me whatever is in the emerald aisle and I just drive away only showing my license at the booth as I leave, including damage waiver.   Great service to skip all lines and bullE36 M3 as National is excellent, and great rates thanks to company discount. 

Yeah rental cars are one of those things where if you spend some time shopping around, or even better, take advantage of credit card or corporate discounts, you can save a lot of money.

In reply to Steve_Jones :

OMG... I didn't watch Seinfeld and had never seen that scene... art imitating life.

I love rental cars.

They're the only ones that can go from reverse to drive without stopping. 

In Minneapolis on a cold snowy night I showed three coworkers the proper way to do a J turn in a Holiday Inn Express parking lot.  Yes, it helped that it was a slippery parking lot.  These guys were jacked up.  

I've always liked rental cars.  

You want to know what I learned about rental car pricing recently? 

First thing wasn't about pricing-it was about reservations: Hertz online will let you rent a car scheduled for a 5PM pickup at a location that closes at 5. The human working that location will NOT give you a car at 5 PM-they are closed!

Second thing was: the guy at the airport location can press enough buttons to eventually match the non-airport price despite the airport taxes and fees and even beat it by a few dollars.

Third thing is: if you turn it in early at the airport to somebody other than the first airport guy, they switch from the weekly rate to the daily rate, plus add the hourly rate (almost as much as the daily rate) and try to charge you more.

In reply to SV reX :

As I age I'm getting a little bit less of a cheapskate.  I don't mind paying a few extra dollars for convenience.  I can change my oil at home with synthetic for $50, but the shop I use charges me $69.99 for a lube/oil/filter using Castrol full synthetic so I just let them do it.

But I'm with you... when it comes to things with such widely varying prices like plane tickets, car parts, and housing, I will research to the ends of the earth to get the cheapest price.

Those travel websites use some pretty complex algorithms that sometimes miss the mark.  They use an A.I. that predicts what they CAN get, and since it's a live thinking entity they sometimes miss the mark.  When I was shopping for a plane ticket to Costa Rica a few years ago I shopped 8 months early.  I found widely-varying pricing ranging from $300-1300.  At about 2 months before the trip, a friend suggested he might want to go along and prices were prohibitive, starting at $800.  In the few weeks before the trip they had a surplus of seats and prices tanked to fill the seats.  I saw one round-trip ticket with one stop listed for $189.

In my brain, I think what happened was that the A.I. at 8 months was like "whatever, it's a $300 flight."  Then as time got closer it assumed people were willing to pay more so it tried $800.  It must have gone too far and not enough people bit on the high price tag so they dropped the price to recoup the $800 seats they didn't sell.

I do know that the travel websites used to pair with airlines, hotels, and car rentals as a service to help them fill vacancies.  After a while the travel sites kinda went on their own which placed them in competition with the very companies they were booking for.  For a while, the travel sites became simply a booking agent... meaning that buying a ticket on Orbitz was the same fare as United... plus a little more to cover Orbitz' pockets.  Many companies started advertising that they cheapest fares/rentals were on their own website.

I use the travel sites as a conglomerate/population tool.  Find the cheapest flight/rental, then go to that carrier's website and book it there for a few bucks cheaper.  About the only time I book on the travel site is if it's a kinda complex flight.  United to O'hare, then Southwest to Atlanta one way... and then American to Pittsburgh and Delta home.  Then it's worth the slight premium to have the booking all in one spot and covered by a guarantee from the travel site.

Also... is Rent a Wreck still a thing?  I remember we used to use them when we went to Florida to see grandparents over Christmas a lot.  We rented some real junk but it was fun.  Back in the 80s we rented an LTD wagon with no heat and power seats that didn't move.  Dad had to drive it with his knees in his face, and it was a year with freezing in Tampa so we all had blankets, but great memories.

A friend and her boyfriend have between them a Tesla and a Kona. They do not consider range at all. He drives down 4 hours to visit her on a single charge and they drove out from BC to Quebec last month in her Tesla with no issues. Range is fast becoming a non issue. My wife is currently looking for an electric something with my full support.

Steve_Jones said:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/A-brgkkjnHc?rel=0

 

Thank you for beating me to it! This is immediately what I thought of from the thread title.

Kb58, there are lots of little gems like that through the series. Also, Curb Your Enthusiasm. Two of my favorites series.

Probably because I'm a sarcastic shiny happy person.

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

Also... is Rent a Wreck still a thing?  I remember we used to use them when we went to Florida to see grandparents over Christmas a lot.  We rented some real junk but it was fun.  Back in the 80s we rented an LTD wagon with no heat and power seats that didn't move.  Dad had to drive it with his knees in his face, and it was a year with freezing in Tampa so we all had blankets, but great memories.

HOLY CRAP rent a wreck! Im 40. When i was in preschool, we had to use rent a wreck for some reason, probably being broke. There was a big van and something else i dont remember, but we named it "the blue bomb" as it was a real crap box.