My girlfriend and I will be travelling to the States in July and will be looking to organise a hire car. Just wondering if anyone had any advice regarding whether it's better to make arrangements prior to or after arriving? Any pitfalls to avoid? Much appreciated!
Recommendations for Car Hire in USA
Ljanxspirit on 24/06/2016 - 17:56
Comments
Sometimes depending on who you fly with you may get a small discount with a certain car hire company. If you are not prebooking this may be worth looking out for onboard in the inflight magazine.
The insurance inclusive price offered by Priceline excludes Australian drivers. Try rentalcars.com The insurance offered indemnities Aussies ( well it did when I checked last year). Also, many of the companies now require you to pay the whole of the damage rather than just the excess, hence your travel insurance excess cover is inadequate (this is why you need the full insurance offered by rental cars.com).
Before you go, check what toll roads are in the area you intend to drive. Some rental car companies charge crazy prices to rent a transponder and if you don't then something like $15 USD a toll. You can avoid all of this by doing homework. For instance, you can buy a temporary transponder in Florida, from the drug store, for $5 and top up on line.
prebooking is almost always cheaper. and prebooking usually doesn't require a deposit or payment, so can be "cancelled" or just not picked up.
Careful of that. I was checking out NY and many there charge a cancellation fee
Search here at Ozbargain, there are numerous similar requests with good answers
Try something like USA car Rental. Plus look at ozbargain wiki
https://www.americacarrental.com/
I used them in March for a 16day hire of a Chevy Tahoe 7 seater 4WD V8.
I saved $800 over what any other company was going to charge me.
I used Avis to book a car in October last year, pick up at LAX and drop off at Vegas. Search around online for promo codes to use.
I also had another booking with Alamo through Netflights.com - UK site, which had much better rates than any others I could find.
You can sometimes get a cheap relocation deal. Usually it's more of a last minute thing.
http://www.imoova.com/imoova/relocations
https://www.jucyusa.com/jucy-perks/rv-relocation-specials/when I went to the US earlier this year I found booking thru Alamo's UK site cheapest http://www.alamo.co.uk/
Im not sure if the Brexit has changed the value of doing it though.
Shouldn't make much difference.
I highly recommend using an aggregator like priceline, kayak, etc. They'll get you a much better price than what you can get by going directly to the company.
Use a brand name company - enterprise(national/alamo) can be cheaper than avis/hertz. Also less likely to squeeze you on fake damage when you return it.
Make sure your travel insurance covers you for the full cost of the car. The US rental companies don't expect you to just pay the 'excess' or 'deductible' if you have an accident. They also don't do the hard sell on additional insurance when you pick up. Make sure your travel insurance covers you for property damage to other people property while driving. Make sure your travel insurance covers you for personal liability (personal injury to someone else) while driving a rental car. You'd be surprised what travel insurance can exclude.