For mid July, I'm planning an East Coast college tour road-trip for me and my oldest girl. We're flying into Burlington VT, and driving down to Raleigh-Durham NC. We need a rental car for about a week, and (obviously) the pick up and drop off are different.
Where does someone go for such rentals nowadays? My mentality is still stuck on old websites from the early days of internet travel (Travelocity, etc...). There must be a better option.
I already booked on "non-refundable" reservation for late June, and then we had to totally change our dates. I'd rather not fall in that same trap again.
PS: If you call the Travelocity customer service line they will give you one hour of grainy smooth-jazz for free. Then they will drop the connection.
PPS: Dollar Rent a Car's smooth-jazz is more annoying but not as grainy. A real, modestly helpful, human finally did answer the phone.
mtn
MegaDork
6/9/21 1:45 p.m.
Disregard most/all of this post - I did not see the separate pickup/dropoff locations.
https://turo.com/ - the Uber/AirBnB of rental cars.
Right now, rentals are through the roof if you can find them at all. All the companies sold off their stock at the beginning of the pandemic. Then we had shortages in new cars, thanks to the chip shortage. Now the rental companies can't buy cars, so there are comparatively very few to rent. I'd check out Turo, above, as well as UHaul.
Kayak.com is my go-to, in part because you book directly and not through one of those intermediaries.
I always had great success booking through AutoSlash.com and always got better rates than the typical travel websites, but have not used them since the pandemic.
For local use I've always gone to the Enterprise rental store that's four blocks from my house, but at least here they don't like to rent cars that will be going out of state. For long trips I've gone to Hertz, they don't seem to mind how far away you'll be driving.
It's always better to pick up the car at a rental store that's not at the airport, that way you avoid having to pay a bunch of extra fees.
I've gotten some good deals on rental cars via delta.com. I don't believe that a flight reservation is required.
If you have a Costco membership, I've found them to be the cheapest game in town. Rental car prices seem to be coming back down from the stratosphere - I looked again last week for a trip that I tried to book a month or two ago and literally couldn't find a single car, and the quotes I got seemed back to normal-ish.
SCCA members save on rental cars, too.
Linky.
Also check with your employer if you work for a big one. I use that contract code for a decade and it's 31.50 a day plus taxes for a full size. Last time I grabbed a brand new Yukon with 2 miles on it.
In reply to bmw88rider :
Agreed that's our corporate rate for national emerald aisle, have/get to pick from what's available that day.
Kayak or Turo currently I've found to be the best.
