Are there any sites that allow you to bring up all rates? Hotwire and Kayak won't work at all for one way.
I'm surprised that Dollar has sometimes started adding drop charges within Florida -- must be new. They never used to.

I'm looking for a one day, one way from Ft. Lauderdale to Naples. This has always been easy before. National has apparently closed their Naples location to add more confusion to the mix.

I don't think you can bid a one way on Priceline either, can you?

We just did this rental in Feb. and I got the best information on www.cruisecritic.com. on their message board. I couldn't find a site that compared all one way rentals.

We rented in Miami and drove to Naples. I ended up using Avis since they were so close to the Miami cruise port. The AWD I used was U405347. There is also an Entertainment coupon that can be used for a one way rental.

I don't think Budget charges extra for one way rentals either.

Thanks. The code you used for Avis is no longer valid. Actually the lowest I've found so far is Avis via Costco at a total of $50.37.
Hertz is $97.73, Dollar is over $100, and Budget (which is not very convenient to us anyway for return) is $56.89. All of these were WITH discount codes of one sort or another.

By comparison, the reverse one day from Naples to Ft. Lauderdale I booked from Dollar at $29.22 total, and was hoping to find something similar.

The first one is May 31 to June 1(Saturday to Sunday), but the second is July 1 to July 2 (Tuesday to Wednesday), so maybe it's getting hung up in Fourth of July extra costs? Also seemed odd that Dollar charges no drop off Naples to Ft. Lauderdale, but does charge one in reverse!

wwww.kayak.com

allows you to price one-way rentals from several car rental companies. You can specify pick-up or drop-off at a specific location (city or airport), and do a search over a certain period of time.

Paul, that's really weird. Earlier when I tried one way from FLL to APF (Naples) on Kayak, it would come up "no availability" every time -- even before I gave the specifics. I assumed it meant they didn't show one way rentals. Now it seems to work. And although it shows Avis at something like $90, when I go to Avis, since I'm registered there with my Costco discount I get the same price I got -- $50.37. So I've booked with Avis, although I'm still open to finding something better. Actually all the prices that Kayak shows are higher than I found direct with the websites.

One really weird thing about Kayak. If you click for them to search car rentals.com, it comes up with dozens of cars from different agencies all with prices. But it is meaningless. Half of those don't even have places in Naples, and after you go to the trouble of clicking and being taken to the site, they tell you that. Kind of a waste of time for them to bring up lots of choices and prices that simply don't exist!

Rentalcars.com has a one-way booking feature, and also allows you to check "city" pickup locations and not just airport pickups.

I just rented from FLL to MCO and began with Kayak to compare pricing but ended up going directly to Alamo & Dollar (or was it budget).

Alamo won - $29! No drop fee.

As for the price difference, weekend rates are usually much lower. I recently did a one-way instead of getting an airport shuttle, and it was only $18.99 because it was a Saturday. The return was a Wednesday and it would have been $55, so I took the $40 shuttle.

I don't like taking a shuttle to the airport. When the shuttle driver arrives, I feel like I'm saying to him... "HELLO STRANGER, JUST TO LET YOU KNOW, WE ARE GOING TO BE AWAY FOR A WHILE, THE HOUSE IS EMPTY! Tell your friends! " (Not that most shuttle drivers are thieves.....but always makes me nervous).

cfntmpn, I don't think you CAN book on Kayak. It only shows you what various agencies supposedly charge (although I have yet to find those figures accurate or even comparable). When you see something you like on Kayak, you click and it takes you to the actual website for that company -- you're not booking via Kayak.

And joesorce, I don't know if you read that when I did Kayak, it brought up carrentals.com list of comparisons, but many were companies that don't even have cars or agencies in my town, so the list made absolutely no sense. It didn't occur to me that was "CarRentals.com" and not "RentalCars.com" -- thanks to you I now know there is a difference. But if I go to rentalcars.com myself, it only shows Avis, Hertz, and Dollar for my itinerary. But if you put in that you have a discount code, and actually type that code in, it still doesn't lower your price. It books you at a higher price and then just says "make sure discounts have been applied when you pick up your car". HUH? That's a little late for me to be worrying what the bottom line price is! I want to know the bottom line price when I book. Am I missing something there?

I did call the local Dollar office, and the guy told me that FLL Dollar has recently started adding those drop off fees for cars going out of there, which explains that. And yes, I guess the main difference between my cost of Naples TO FLL as opposed to FLL TO Naples, is the fact that the lower one is a weekend, plus FLL has added considerable fees to pay for their new parking/rental car facility. In fact with Dollar, I also save $6 by using an off site office right by the airport instead of the one they have AT the airport.

The way I do Florida with great success is:

1. Go to a search engine (orbitz, etc.) and find which ones are at least in the ball park price-wise.

2. Go to http://www.mousesavers.com/rentalcar.html.

3. Check which rental companies in step one have the best discounts and book directly with the company on their website.


Several of the companies offer codes (especially the Orlando Magic Card code and the Walmart codes) that give free additional drivers and waive drop off fees. And this is for the whole state of Florida, not just Orlando.

Good luck!

kelliebellie, that's a pretty extensive list of discount codes you can get through mousesavers. Valuable resource, particularly for weekly or longer rentals!

I've been working at it, though, and none of the codes remove the drop off charges from FLL on Dollar, and so far none of them match the regular Costco discount for Avis.

Edit: I did find one code there for Avis that would save me exactly 80cents! But the WalMart Codes given both added over $25 to the one day rental! It certainly is all a crap-shoot, isn't it?

Try K817625 for Avis.

I check the rates on rentalcars.com, see which 2 or 3 are the lowest, then go to their websites with the discount codes.

Nope. That code got me $59.22 compared to the Costco $50.37, and the K199060 code from mousesavers that got me $49.57.

But keep 'em coming.

It looks like they took off the Orlando Magic Card. I loved the Orlando Magic Card. It would make cars very cheap.

80 cents, eh? Well go buy yourself something nice.

I read this on the enterprise site (plus they would give you a ride to your final destination):
If you are picking up your rental vehicle in Florida, you may return it to select locations throughout the state of Florida. To reserve your next Enterprise one-way, call (866)-307-1773.

Thrifty has the best rates ($28), but a $47 drop off fee. Bleah.

kelliebellie, Enterprise is funny, because I couldn't do a one way rental online, so I called. The agent had a rough time of it, but finally discovered Ft. Lauderdale to Naples was one pair they could do a one way rental for. The one day price? $129 plus change!

I didn't change my reservation for the 80 cents. It gets very involved changing a quote to include an Avis wizard number and keep that price. I felt it wasn't worth it. So I guess that 80cents is gone with the wind.

I run all my rentals (including one way) on Travelocity. It tells me who has the best deals, then I check the rental company sites to see if they will offer better.

Keith

I guess all these comments about the various websites (which IS, of course, what I asked for) have me a bit confused. I don't think I've ever booked a rental car without using some sort of discount. So now I'm curious. What good do the various comparison websites do if they don't show what your price will be with a discount? I'm quickly seeing that there is no relationship between the highest to lowest prices on a site like Kayak or Expedia to the final price from any agency based on whatever coupon or discount you can find that applies to one agency only.

It might be worth a call to Thrifty to see if they would wave the drop-off fee. Fat chance probably.

I hate booking rental cars. It is such a total game! I think most of the rental company's own sites guarantee lowest prices, so I always go direct (but with coupon codes of course).

If you have AAA you can book Hertz through the AAA website. That might wave any drop off fees. Hertz always seems so ridiculous in price that any discount usually isn't worth it.

It almost always end up at Alamo with the Costco discount as the cheapest rental from the major companies.

Have found some surprising discounts on Kayak or sidestep enough times that I still check them though.

That post above should say " I almost always ...."