I wanted to visit my mother in February but the car rental prices are prohibitive. The airfares are just fine and I keep on reading how the hotels are doing poorly, so why are the car rentals so expensive, e.g $600 for a compact for a week on all the sites.

I have tried Expedia, Hotwire, and the indiviudal companies.

Are you checking the rates only at airport locations? Is there anyway you could pick up the car at a non-airport location?

It might be cheaper.

What week and what airport? Could be Super Bowl time?

Check EZ Car Rental's prices.
we have been pleased with them in Orlando, Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale and Miami. Also, keep checking prices up until the last minute. They tend to change hour by hour some days.

It is FLL and the time was mid-Febraury, I checked near my mother and the prices are reasonable so I must figure out transportation from the airport to the nearby car rental facility.

Thanks. The price difference between the two is extraordianry.

We recently saved over $400 by renting a car off airport in Florida.

yes, the taxes at FLL are 33% So a minor inconvenience will save hundreds of dolalrs.

aduchamp - I found that to be true - much cheaper to rent off airport - even w/ 3 of us taking a van to the car rent place from the FLL airport, I can still save 100+ in March.

We rented a car at Orlando International Airport over Christmas through Dollar - the base rental was $279 a week for a big Chrysler 300. With gas prices low and we knew we wouldn't be doing much driving I liked having the bigger car. Total with an extra driver and taxes was just over $400. When I first started pricing cars I was finding over $600 which is crazy (before taxes and extra driver). So try for a bigger/more luxury car and you may have some luck.

They talked us into putting unlimited tolls on the car (basically acting like you have a transponder when you don't have one.) Anyway, the only tolls we hit were two leaving the airport and two returning to the airport so they took off the difference between what we paid (I think $27) and the tolls were $3.00.

Good luck.

If you're coming from the northeast, you might look into the Auto Train.

We're going down for a month, and the R/T for two people and the car is about 850.

I won't even go into the other advantages, but they are considerable.

I tested the East Sunrise location of Enterprise and used Feb 9 as a random arrival date. Compact is $149 a week.

you might be coming to florida straight dab in kids' vacation week when prices on everything are jacked up.

Thank you all.