ccolor

I just boo-booed an want to pass along a tip to maybe help someone else from making the same mistake. In the past we've always checked Hotwire for car rental prices, then bid on Priceline at 20-25% lower. We did that today and got what we thought was a great price. Then I went to the car rental website itself and found out that the car was renting from them at $10 less a day than what was showing on Hotwire. If I'd have looked there also before submitting my bid, I would have gone a few dollars per day less and maybe had a chance on saving some hard earned bucks.........some days.......

Owen_ONeill

I've always checked the car rental sites directly as well as checking Hotwire before doing a PL care rental bid. I find that about 50% of the time, I can find a direct booking special that beats HW and PL. I do my PL bids at 20-25% lower than the lowest direct price and find that I rarely win the bid. Sidestep is a pretty good search engine/pricing utility for car rwental rates. I tried using Breezenet and didn't care for it - too much time spent linking through to direct sites to check the real rate.

Owen_ONeill

I forgot to mention - the new website that has been mentioned here a few times lately www.betterbidding.com has a section for car rental deal info. Someone has posted a list there of all the various promo codes available and categorized them by rental company - might be helpful in getting a deal.

don512

On an upcoming trip to San Francisco, Hotwire is giving me a rate of $25 a night for a midsize car and I have found rates of $18 at Alamo and $19 at Budget. I guess if you compare them with Hertz or Avis, which they comm nly use the $25 a night might be a good deal, but it seems you can find them at some of the other dealers cheaper. I haven't tried Priceline. I would have to go at least 25% lower to get the same rate as Budget or Alamo.

Andrew

Not only should you check the rental car sites before using Priceline or Hotwire, but if you have AAA, *call* a few of them as well. I wound up using Priceline for a car last November and still saving 20% off the best rate I could find, which was a AAA rate I could not get on a website. In the future I'm not sure I would book a car with PL/HW unless I could save even more than 20%...

Andrew

Patrick

Do car rentals on Priceline work the same as hotels. Do you have to prepay in full, and if your flight is canceled you would lose the entire payment? And do you know which car rental company?

ccolor

Yep Patrick, the car rentals are the same as hotels - we usually rent compact pick-up trucks so we can pretty much narrow down what rental agencies we are dealing with. You do pay ahead which is good and bad - I like having part of vacations/trips paid for, but hate it if there are any better deals that pop up later. About the flight cancellations, there is a condition that if your flight is cancelled outside of your control which keeps you from picking up your car you can cancel your reservation upon verification. And that's a good thing.....

Jon_Eric

This is funny because I was checking this just last night. Unless I'm missing something I have never found a better deal through Priceline, Expedia etc that I couldnt get myself on the phone. I'll be in Savannah in early March and the same hotel on priceline is 40.00 dollars more than I'll be paying on my own. I already have my ticket, but decided to check air fares as well and again, much more than I actually paid, but the timing may have something to do with that. Theres just certain variables the on-line sites cant account for the way a live person can on the phone. AAA usually offers the best discounts for car rentals, espescially Hertz.

Andrew

Jon_Eric, how do you know a hotel cost $40 more on Priceline than what you got on your own? There's no way to know the price until you make an offer and it is accepted. You can look at prices other people have paid with Priceline via the BiddingForTravel.com site but that's no guarantee you would get the same price.

Have you looked at what people have been paying for Savannah hotels on BiddingForTravel/Priceline? What type of hotel? I'm used to saving with Priceline at least 40% off of the best AAA rate for a hotel I can book on my own.

Andrew

don512

I must say that I thought the same exact thing as Andrew about Jon Eric's comments, I hope he tells us how he got a price on hotels from Priceline without bidding on one. Also, I would like to mention that I recently got the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco for $50 a night (the AAA price was $223). Looking through the site at biddingfortravel.com, the rates are most often MUCH lower than any other rate you can find elsewhere.

Patrick

I'm not a Priceline user -- just don't think it's right for me, but I must agree. Jon-Eric is really confused. There's no way he could know how much more Priceline would have been for the same dates as he paid for his hotel via AAA. And I've never heard of Hertz giving more than 10% off to AAA members for car rentals. Many consolidators give up to 40% and maybe more.

Jon_Eric

Hi everyone! I've got to start going to bed before 4:00AM, it was Expedia, not priceline. I just checked again and it lists various hotels and some are lowest average rate while others list rate. My apologies to Priceline fans. I might explore Priceline when I have more time later.
As for car rentals I like Hertz and I usually get more than 10% off with AAA.
In fact I got Hertz's Prestige class last night for 20% off with AAA. I'll check Priceline to see what they have to offer also. My hotel rate isn't based on any AAA savings, though they often have them, this one is either Am Ex platinum or their corporate rate.
Oh, that reminds me Am Ex. Platinum often offers discounts on car rentals too or upgrades. Sorry for the confusion.