- These are 10 cheap rental car hacks to save you money in 2023. Hack number one, know where to find the lowest prices. I'll begin with a rental from the Los Angeles airport and using a website called AutoSlash.
com and punching in the dates of March 10th to March 17th, noon drop off, noon pickup. The lowest price I can find is $197 for the week. If I were to punch in the same dates, pickup and drop off time to Expedia, as an example, using that as my search engine, the lowest price I can find is $379.
Not only is AutoSlash cheaper but let's say I want to rent from a company that's better known, despite that first one being well-rated, Avis will be the company I'll compare. $391 is what I can score with a pay now AutoSlash rate that I can cancel for free up to 48 hours in advance for an economy car. Punching the same information into avis.
com gets me an economy car for $70 more and a cancellation policy that's much worse than what I'll find on AutoSlash. And I should mention none of this content is sponsored. Hack number two, don't let a car rental company trick you into paying more for the rental.
We've all seen those very confusing car and SUV names when we go to rent a vehicle. We've got compact SUV, intermediate SUV, standard SUV, standard elite SUV, and a full-size SUV. If you can derive any information from just those titles tied to how many people can that car fit and how many suitcases can you fit in the trunk, you might have a PhD in car rentals and I support you.
But for the average consumer it's always nice to have the information broken down a little bit more delicately. I did find a great resource online where the different car classes are explained with specific vehicle examples because sometimes you'll go onto Avis or Hertz directly and you'll see a little suitcase and a little person icon tied to the car rental titles but you don't actually know what type of car you're getting and how much suitcase space you can find in addition to the gas mileage broken down for you. Hack number three, make sure the pickup and drop-off times are identical when possible or it could cost you big.
Let's use the Avis website and June 17th at the Dallas Fort Worth Airport 9:00 AM as an example with the drop-off time of June 18th 9:00 AM. The pay later rate is $114. The pay now rate is $109 on a full-size car.
Now watch what happens when I take the same dates but a one hour difference between the pickup and the drop off time. June 17th, 9:00 AM at Dallas Fort Worth. June 18th, 10:00 AM drop off at Dallas Fort Worth.
It's $176 now for a full-size car versus $170 for the pay now rate. And again, we're comparing $114 to $176 for a one hour difference. In this case, I don't mind going to the airport a little bit early to save myself what could be a significant amount of money.
And it's worth noting that it does pay to be patient and kind to the employees of the car rental companies. Just through some basic positive engagement over the course of the last year I've been upgraded almost every time. And later on in this video I'll tackle the highly controversial car insurance add-on.
Hack number four, the second you're even considering a vacation or trip, book your car rental. Unlike airfare which has sales days and those sweet spots on a calendar where it's best to book a certain amount of time before you travel, car rental rates are based on demand and inventory. The earlier you book, the lower the price will be and in the event you book a car rental very far in advance and you're worried the price has changed or you didn't actually get the lowest rate, there is a free tool to track your rate over time.
You just simply input the company from which you've rented and your confirmation number and in the unlikely event the price drops to something lower after you've booked, you'll be notified. Hack number five, before I get to car rental coupons and discount codes, there is one membership that can often score you the absolute lowest price and some additional benefits and that is the Costco membership. I don't know why I was so dramatic there but if you use the rental car's tab from the travel section of the Costco website, let's use the Orlando airport and Labor Day as an example, assuming that I want to rent a convertible, which wouldn't actually make sense for my family, the lowest price I can find for these specific dates and drop off times using the four major rental car companies which Costco actually compares on this nice little chart, a standard convertible from Alamo is the least expensive price at $297.
This is the total rental price. All taxes and fees are added. You can cancel at any time, plus you can add an additional driver for free.
If we took the same information, the same dates, the same drop off times, and continued our search for a convertible from the Alamo website directly, the price I get for the same dates and times and location is $404 for a convertible. That's $404 from Alamo directly compared to $297 for the exact same thing just by booking through Costco. Hack number six, you could save more cash than you ever thought possible on a car rental by avoiding the airport.
Sometimes just taking an Uber, a Lyft, or a cab a few miles from the airport could save you hundreds of dollars over the course of a week. In the example of this Avis rental in Atlanta, if I were to pick up a minivan from the Atlanta airport on May 10th and return it a week later, I'm looking at a minivan rental rate for the week of $1233 with a pay later rate. If I modify the exact same reservation to a slightly different area in Atlanta, and in this case let's use this address, which is the Loews Atlanta Hotel, my rate drops by several hundred dollars to $803.
The Loews Atlanta Hotel is a 14-minute drive from the airport. That could be a $20 or $40 Uber and I'd be paying $803 versus $1234 by simply venturing a few miles away. This will work in the case of most major airports, towns, and cities, and sometimes that neighborhood car rental place is just a couple of miles from the airport.
Hack number seven, renting a car from one of these two companies can score you a lower rate and get the car delivered directly to your door where you can skip those hassles at the airport. The two companies are Kyte and Turo, which I'll get to in a moment. Kyte might have been a company that you noticed before when I was comparing the lowest rental prices from the Los Angeles airport for this fictitious trip I created.
Turo is kind of like the Airbnb of car rentals where you're renting generally from an individual rather than a large car conglomerate. And if you are looking to drive some fancier cars like a Tesla, a Porsche, a BMW, where you can specifically select the vehicle of your choice and have it delivered to your hotel or wherever it is you happen to be, that is another resource that you might want to consider. Hack number eight is tied to the power of photographic evidence.
I know that sounds weird. Take a time-stamped photo with your smartphone of your car when you pick it up from the rental center, even if there is a damage report. Most of those damage reports we sign off on don't always reveal precisely where a scratch or dent may happen to be from the renter before you.
Pay close attention to the rims of the vehicle as these are often very expensive and often badly scratched up or damaged and not marked on the damage report so you could be fronting the bill for someone else's mistake. And when you refill the tank on your rental car before you return it, take a photo of your gas refill receipt which will include the location of the gas station and take a picture of the dashboard showing the fuel tank and time and mileage upon your return. In the case of a recent rental I returned to Avis, even though my fuel reading was completely full upon return, I was incorrectly charged by the person checking in my vehicle $98 to refill the tank.
Now, this incident was quickly corrected. I was given a coupon and an apology, but mistakes do happen and it's good to have that photographic evidence to support your claim. Hack number nine, extending your car rental a day or two longer beyond the point where you'd actually need it can save you a lot of money.
I'll explain why in a moment, but for the sake of this comparison for a downtown Chicago standard convertible rental, if I were to select a pickup date of April 17th and an April 23rd drop off date, I'm looking at $847. If I extend this exact same rental by one day, changing it from an April 23rd drop off to April 24th, my entire rental drops by almost half price to $427. Again, $847 if I drop the car off on the 23rd, but if I extend it to the 24th, my total price is $427.
If I were to use Priceline as an example in Seattle, for a minivan from May 8th to May 13th, I'm looking at $45 a day, and if I were to drop the car off two days later, I'm paying $30 a day for a grand total of $334 by paying for the car two extra days versus the shorter rental, which is $337. How is that possible? Well, sometimes reserving a car longer than you think will give you a lower base rate and a lower overall price.
Some rental car agencies will even offer you a prorated refund if you return your car early and if you are booking a flight and then planning to rent a car once you land, that confirmation email with your airfare from the airline often has some great coupons and discount codes built into it. In the case of this American Airlines confirmation email, I could save up to 35% on Avis or 30% on Budget by simply completing my car rental booking with American Airlines. United Airlines and many other service providers have additional discounts.
For my next hack, before I get to the bonus section, know the truth about the car rental insurance you think you have. Many people will decline purchasing any type of car renter's insurance from their car rental company because we think we have it tied to our credit card. The vast majority of credit cards have a fine print tied to your collision damage waiver, which says, "Within your country of residence, coverage is secondary when renting for personal reasons.
" That means if you live in the United States and you're renting a car in the US, the car rental insurance your credit card provides is secondary to your own personal insurance. So if you're in a rental car and you hit another car, you have to go through your own insurance company which could affect your premiums and your personal policy before anything the credit card company will do to even assist you which makes the so-called perk tied to your credit card kind of useless. There are some other credit cards out there with some expensive annual fees like the American Express credit cards that do provide a primary insurance so you don't have to go through your own personal insurance in the event of an accident.
And the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card as an example also provides primary insurance to you in the event that you do decline the car rental's insurance company. And now for the bonus section which will include how to score a free car rental for several days, which I'll get to in a moment. Many of us rely upon price aggregating websites like Hotwire, or Kayak, Priceline, and Expedia to compare all of the major car rental companies side by side.
But what do you do when you want to compare all the aggregators side by side? AutoRentals. com is a resource that I love.
You can punch in any travel dates, and assuming you don't mind some fine print and some sometimes confusing charts and popups, you can find all of the best daily rates comparing Expedia to Turo to Priceline to Hotwire to CarRentals. com and within a few minutes you'll be able to differentiate the prices for various car sizes on specific dates for the total rates versus the daily rates, assuming you do have that time on your hands to do the search. Now, how about a potentially free car or RV rental provided you are able to travel or book a road trip around specific dates from transfercarus.
com and I will link to that in the video description box. This is how it works. There are no booking fees and as long as you have a driver's license, rental car companies rely upon services like this to send individuals in cars back and forth so they don't have to spend all of that money to transfer vehicles on a truck.
What does that mean? Well, that means if I were to consider a road trip between Seattle and San Francisco on any of the dates that I've just pulled up, I could enjoy the benefits of an RV for free for 14 days. If I wanted to extend my time beyond the 12 or 14 days that are provided, I could enjoy four optional extra days for $150 merely by signing up for this rare and slightly unique opportunity.
If you enjoyed this video, please feel free to share it with anyone who might be renting a car. Thank you so much for watching. I love you, bye bye.
