[thereuare]

Shopping rates for a rental car?

Use BetterBidding's FREE Tool to search Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity all at once:

Car Rental Checker

[Cameron Crazy]

Just a heads up, it looks like the car checker simply takes you to the Orbitz website.

[thereuare]

Thanks... i'll look into it later tonite (appears to be airfarecheck too, but not the hotlel checker).

[thereuare]

FIXED on both counts!

[kingston53]

I have had good success with Mobissimo

Found better thrifty rates then with the 3x search engine above...

[going]

Why doe the Car Rental Checker only give me a weekly rate when I asked for a 4 day rate?

Thank you.

[headtrip]

going, on Aug 6 2006, 03:02 PM, said:

Why doe the Car Rental Checker only give me a weekly rate when I asked for a 4 day rate?

Thank you.

Most likely answer is that the weekly rate is less than the daily rate X 4 days. When I did a sample 4 day rental, it also quoted me the weekly rate because the National daily rate of $31 X 4 was about the same as the weekly rate of $122. On a 5 day rental, nearly all the rental agencies quoted the weekly rate, not the daily rate.

One thing I did think about through is that Alamo once wanted to charge me a fee because I had a weekly rental, but I wanted to turn in the car early. Since I had already paid for the day, could a company actually charge you more because you turned in a car early? Has anyone else had this experience?

In the end they waived the charge, but I thought it was unusal and a bit crazy for charging someone if they turned in a car more than 24 hours ahead of schedule.

[WashDC-MKE-SFBay-guy]

Re: "One thing I did think about though is that Alamo once wanted to charge me a fee because I had a weekly rental, but I wanted to turn in the car early. Since I had already paid for the day, could a company actually charge you more because you turned in a car early? Has anyone else had this experience?

In the end they waived the charge, but I thought it was unusal and a bit crazy for charging someone if they turned in a car more than 24 hours ahead of schedule."

I, too, have been threatened with this penalty by Alamo--and another company that I can't recall--but in the end, I didn't return the car early, so it didn't affect me. I see that no one has answered your question, so I will re-ask it. Can a company do this? Has anyone experienced this penalty? Is there a way out of this penalty, other than hoping for a waiver like the one headtrip received?

[lowballer]

Most weekly car rental rates have a 5-day minimum, and say so somewhere on the contract. More precisely, the rental period must be at least four full 24-hour periods and some part of a fifth. The reason for this is to prevent people renting during the week (business travelers) from booking a weekly rate, which is often lower than four (or even three) weekdays.

If the minimum is stated on the contract, it's cut and dried. If Alamo charges you an extra $30 or whatever, that might be a lot less than four weekdays retroactively at "full rack".

OTOH, if you are on a daily rate and bring the car back early, you are usually not charged for the days you do not use. For example: you rent a car for nine days, which is 1 week + 2 extra days. Bring it back on day seven and you're usually only charged for the week.

[micawber]

FWIW, it's doing it again. My guess is that Orbitz is detecting the referral and popping out into a full window.