I've been studying rental car prices
4th of July..and we will lose our savings on hotel and airare unless I come up with a better stategy than calling rental car co.


Kayak..cheapest economy 51. pr 4 days
Called Avis as I have a couple of frquent user coupons 4 day 301.19
Hotwire 35.95 for 210.30
Should I bid on Priceline? HAven't done that before?

Give it another week and try Hotwire (and kayak?) again -- as you get closer to departure time, the prices sometimes come down, although I'd guess 4th of July weekend it won't come down much.

Can't speak about priceline, sorry.

I have had AWESOME luck on Priceline at SeaTac. My best ever was $7/day (for an economy car in November, but still). The most I've paid is $13/day on a compact and they ended up giving me a free upgrade to a Ford Escape. Note that SeaTac has very high taxes - definitely worth trying PL IMO.

Are you staying in Seattle after arriving? If so, prices are generally better at the downtown locations and the savings on the tax rate is big, so waiting to pick up the car is something to consider.

TXs for the suggestions everyone:

Update for 6/6. Yesterday I called Avis re # and was wrking with a very unhelpful offshore person..had to explain 3 times where Seattle was.
Today I called Avis Wizard member # & I got stateside assistant who helped me get a resv of 201.08 for 4 days cheapest car..then said next higher class car was same price so got a bigger car...

My plan is to keep looking and may follow advice to PL next week..fall back is Avis 201.

The rental car prices just amaze me:I don't feel like we have a reliable sources to get teh best rental rate even if like me I put hours of research into it? What do you think?

If the price is $201.84 including all taxes for four days, it isn't a terrible price. But you can probably do better on PL. I'm about to bid for the following two weeks, and will post what I end up with if you're interested.

Why wait. Just start bidding on PL from today. Start low and then add $1 next day if you don't get it. After "maxing" out what you want to spend, then just bid daily until you get it. If not, use your confirmed AVIS.

4 day rental, if you start bidding at $14 for a mid-size, for example, that's only $104 total. Significant saving. You can bid up to $30/day and still save yourself almost $20 total.

Txs everyone: reluctant to start bidding PL as I have never BID for anything in my life.

I did look at previous posts here on Fodors & scanned the PL website for some clues and of course posted this inquiery to help educate myself (more like throwing myself on the mercy of my friends at Fodors) as price of vacation is getting up there for us.

The SEATAC trip is a 30 anniversary, 55 BD and trip home for us so I really don't want to "goof".

If you could bear with me, I am viewing this post as a Masters Degree of how to get better rental car prices..."bidder in training"