Car Rental

Travel geeks and fans of the classic TV show “Firefly” will love these: and I’m both!

View at ThinkGeek

Rent a car for a one-way rental for only $1/day! It’s true!

The catch is that you have to pick up the car at Portland International Airport, and drop it off in the Bay Area (San Francisco International Airport, San Jose International Airport, or Oakland International Airport). But if you’re looking for something fun to do for Spring Break, why not drive to San Francisco for cheap?

View deal at Thrifty.com

Thrifty has a new promotion that I found interesting. It’s called the Thrifty Wild Car Promotion, and you pay for rates lower than you’d pay for a Mid-Size car, but you get a Mid-Size or larger vehicle. The catch is that you don’t find out what the vehicle is until you get to the rental agency. It’s a little goofy, but it could save you a bunch of money, and it’d add a little bit of excitement to your rental, wouldn’t it? Maybe I’m weird, but I’d be excited to find out what I got!

Thrifty Wild Car Promotion via Thrifty Coupons

On November 17, J.D. Power and Associates released their 2009 Rental Car Satisfaction Survey. This is their 14th year of the survey. For the study they measured costs and fees, the pick-up process, the rental car, the return process, the reservation process, and the shuttle bus/van.

So what were the results of the survey? Overall satisfaction is roughly the same as last year, after two years of big declines. Enterprise was the big winner, scoring tops in all six categories and winning the top award for the sixth straight year. They were followed by National and Hertz, respectively. The lowest scoring car rental companies was Payless and Dollar, followed by Budget and Thrifty.

Interpretation of the surveys suggests that having a single problem has a notable effect on overall satisfaction. The study also suggests that having a “highly satisfying” car rental has a strong positive effect on customer loyalty levels. Which makes sense.

In the end, I’m not sure how much surveys like this matter. Hopefully the rental car companies will work harder in the future and treat each renter as more than just a number. I’ve never had a terrible rental experience, and the small issues I’ve had have always been dealt with promptly – for every rental car company. I currently have no loyalties toward any particular company – do you?

2009 Rental Car Satisfaction Survey

Should you prepay for gas with your rental car? That question has always stymied me a little bit when filling out the paperwork with my rental car. Sure, it’d be easier to not have to find a nearby gas station and do a last-minute top-off when I’m already late for my flight, but gas is expensive – and I don’t want to over-pay by prepaying. In the end, mostly I just don’t want to get scammed. So what’s the best choice?

According to auto rental consultant Neil Abrams, only a small percentage of consumers choose the prepay option. For those that make that choice, they pay a price close to the local price at the pump. If you don’t prepay and you don’t fill the tank before dropping off the car, you’ll be charged a premium for gas – often several dollars or more over the price at the pump at nearby gas stations. Strangely, however, selling gas isn’t a big profit source for rental car companies. With the costs of fuel storage, labor costs, and productivity issues included, there are significant costs in the process of filling gas tanks by the rental car companies. According to another auto rental consultant, Mike Kane, in the end car rental companies price gas the way they do to scare you into doing what they want – return the gas tank full.

So what’s the answer then? In the end, it comes down to what you’re doing with the car – but usually you should turn down the prepay option. If you need a car for limited amount of driving (for example, a long weekend in Las Vegas with a few rounds of golf at different courses), you won’t use enough gas to make prepaying worthwhile. However, if you will be using the car a lot and have an early flight out (and you don’t want to drive around an unfamiliar city looking for a gas station at 4 am), prepay and forget about it. Just make sure that when you return the car the arrow is near the ‘E’!