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dreamshark... but I finally managed to complete the rental car reservation for our imminent Florida Keys vacations. I rented from Enterprise through the Chase Travel Portal using my CSP, (the only credit card that provides primary CDW/LDW rental insurance). I was hoping I could find what I wanted through Chase, but it took me several passes through their search engine to master the intricacies. Turns out there's a class of vehicle called "Compact SUV" that sounds like just what we want. Priced like a compact, but apparently shaped like a little minivan: higher off the ground for easy entry/exit and easy to load. Anyway, that's my hope. At $497 for 6 days it was slightly more expensive than a Nissan Versa, but not by much. And I was able to pay for it with Ultimate Rewards points, which is another plus.
What I learned along the way.
What I learned along the way.
- The price of the exact same rental varies MASSIVELY from portal to portal and rental agency to rental agency. The prices turned up by Costco Travel were jaw-droppingly high, more than twice the cost of the other search engines I tried. Their lowest offering was a Nissan Versa for $1175!!! The portals offered by private loyalty programs were the best (Delta and Chase).
- When searching for a car, don't specify the size of the car. You never know exactly how they are going to classify (or price) individual vehicles and you just might miss the best deal.
- Searching for one-way rentals is always possible, but full of pitfalls. On Delta Cars you can't specify the drop-off location until the second search screen. On Chase you can specify it whenever you want, but sometimes the "different dropoff" just disappears between searches.
- Be sure to sort the results in order of price, not the stupid default (which is usually something like "Recommended," which apparently means "most expensive"). It took me 3 passes through the Chase portal to figure this out, and then I found exactly what I was looking for (Enterprise, which was much cheaper than the competition, floated to the top with just the type of vehicle I wanted).
- Kayak is incomprehensible. I guess it is just a comparison engine, not one that actually completes a rental for you? It kept shifting me off to different places, like Expedia (which immediately tried to upsell me) and some squikky outfit that wouldn't tell me the name of the rental company until I agreed to rent from them (really??? What if it is Hertz?). After each dead-end I had to back up and reenter my rather complicated search criteria. I gave up and went back to search engines that remembered at least some of it.
- Be sure to check the cancellation policy. Most of the recommendations from Kayak were non-refundable.
- Double and triple-check the pickup and dropoff locations before confirming. I almost rented a car with a dropoff at some military base because I accidentally selected "Key West" instead of "Key West International Airport" from the dropdown list. Yikes!
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Date: 2025-04-25 06:25 pm (UTC)Correct. It is worthwhile to use Kayak if you're trying to compare many options. It is much less useful if you know a short list of companies that are the only options. For instance, when I fly business, I can (effectively) only use American, United or Delta. So it's easier to look directly at those three than to use Kayak.
But when I'm looking for a cheap hotel, it's easier to use Kayak. You can either click their links and end up at another third-party site like super.com, or you can use the results to get a decent idea of where is cheap and then go book direct, maybe at a higher price, but maybe also with better terms.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-25 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-25 09:38 pm (UTC)K.