Hotwire For Car Rental - Pros/Cons?
 

I need to rent a car in Providence R.I. for 10 days. Hotwire is quoting me a rate that is much better than any rate quote I can get on any of the major individual rental agency websites. Having never used Hotwire for anything more than a source to gauge rates or fares, can anyone tell me of personal experiences with them from the standpoint of car rentals? Pros or cons? I'm really tempted to book with them, but just wanted to cover all my bases. Thanks.

I've gotten some great rates through Priceline.com for Providence.

I rent cars through hotwire all the time. In fact, I use them all the time now because I can get such good rates.<BR><BR>A couple of things to consider - first off, when you book your car, you've paid for it and that's it. You can't cancel or change unless you have a proven airline cancelation/change that prevents you from picking up the car.<BR><BR>Also, I just booked a car in Mpls for a weekend and noticed that the taxes and fees on the rental were 50% of the rental price. Yikes! But, it's still about half the price of what I could get directly from Hertz, etc. As for rental companies, we got Hertz once, Budget once and Alamo once.

I've rented several times for pickup at BWI, and the price has always been FANTASTIC! However, make sure you rent for the exact period you need the car for. My $20/day * 5 days rental (Sat-Wed) would have been $81/day for any extra time. As it was, returned the car over 1 day early, but received no refund (as fully stated by them ahead of time). Rentals are by 24 hour periods only, so if you need the car for a partial day, rent for one entire day extra. BTW, each time the car has been from Budget, with no problems at all. (remove x in my eddress to write me)

I've used Hotwire.com several times renting cars with excellent luck. Last time I got a super price in Hawaii (National Car Rental). I agreed and paid for a compact but when I picked up the car, they were out of compacts so they upgraded me for no extra charge to a Mustang convertible! Ahhhhhh!