PHL Philadelphia Minivan Alamo

[herb2000]

Originally bid $45 for minivan and bid failed - was offered to rebid and pushed price up to $47 -- won bid with Alamo.

Before bidding had searched rental agencies with lowest price at $65/day.

[thereuare]

Thanks for the report.

[herb2000]

When I picked up the car Alamo rep asked if there would be additional drivers. They said it would be an additional $10 a day for additional drivers including spouse. I later checked their policies as well as other major rental agencies. All of the agencies including Alamo allow spouse and certain other drivers for no additional fee. But Alamo has an exception for "prepaid" car renatals, i.e. priceline, where they charge an additional fee. Very much a rip off. It is very possible that someone could pay more than list if they have a small discount via priceline, pay the higher priceline taxes/fees and then is chagred the $10 a day for an additional driver.

Knowing this now I think it would not be worth using priceline unless I knew my discount was at least $20 a day since I could easily end up with Alamo charging me more. Really a bad situation since other rentals I have had through priceline with Hertz, Budget and Avis were without additional fees and they treated me as a regular customer.

[thereuare]

I later checked their policies as well as other major rental agencies. All of the agencies including Alamo allow spouse and certain other drivers for no additional fee

At least as of a year ago (i haven't had time to look since i just read your post above) this isn't true... Alamo has always charged, all renters, and additional driver fee (the exception being some group rate codes, such as Costco). See this post from a year ago: Car Rental Additional Drivers

Alamo has an exception for "prepaid" car renatals, i.e. priceline, where they charge an additional fee.

If this is true hopefully it's local to this rental counter and not a nationwise policy, as it would be a really bad practice and shouldn't be allowed. While often difficult to enforce or evaluate, priceline customers need to be treated like every other 'standard' customer... a fee such as this is an obvious breach of this premise.

EDIT to ADD: i just checked, and from the Alamo website:

United States

Additional driver fee may be charged.

... so i don't think the policy has changed from a year ago, unless this is policy specific to the PHL counter

[herb2000]

I stand corrected on Alamo charging for additional drivers -- sorry about that - I thought I had seen the no additional fee on their site but when I went back I could not find it.

It appears that they do charge more for pre-paid reservation. In Philadelphia they were charging $10 a day. I tried to find policy on additional drivers for non-prepaid reservations on Alamo site but could not find anything stating a rate. I did find on Southwest site that Alamo charges $7/day for additional drivers for non-prepaid reservations.

Thanks for the link to your other post on rentals that do or do not charge extra for additional drivers. It is important to have predicability in bidding for priceline to realy work well. So if the additional driver is free for all rental agencies that would work or if there was a standard additional charge that too would work. Not knowing when you're bidding whether there will be additional fees is problemmatic. I did state this to priceline in a satisfaction survey I submitted yesterday. In the mean time if an additional driver is likely (i.e. long trips) probably best to assume that there will be an additional charge when bidding.

Thanks