The rates for rental cars have been wildly volatile — and, at times, insanely expensive — during the last 2.5 years due to a number of factors — including a shortage of critical components for vehicles and pent up demand for travel as the result of the current 2019 Novel Coronavirus pandemic as only two of many reasons…
Save Money on Rental Car Rates With This One Simple Trick?
…but could you save money on rates for rental cars with an incredibly simple trick that only takes a few seconds to implement?
“Instead of automatically booking your pickup time to be on the hour — say, 9 a.m. or 1 p.m. or 6 p.m. — ask for a second quote for the half hour before or after your original time — 9:30 a.m. or 1:30 p.m. or 6:30 p.m.”, according to this article which was written by Jonathan Weinberg, who is the founder of AutoSlash, which is a free service that saves customers money on renting vehicles. “These price drops are not a coincidence. Certain car rental brands often price their rentals lower on the half hour than on the hour. Why is this? It has to do with pricing algorithms, automated rate shopping, and catching your competitor unaware to swing more of the business in your direction.”
Using one of the examples which was cited in the aforementioned article, a quote for a reservation for a minivan at Salt Lake City International Airport from Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at noon through Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at noon — which was initially booked through AutoSlash — was generated on Priceline, which resulted in both Alamo Rent a Car and Payless Car Rental offering a rate of approximately $62.00 per day or $524.96 total, which includes all taxes and fees…
…but change the times of both picking up and dropping off the rental vehicle to 12:30 in the afternoon instead of at noon while changing nothing else…
…and although the rate offered by Payless Car Rental remained the same, Alamo Rent a Car offered a rate of approximately $55.00 per day or $469.53 total, which includes all taxes and fees — which represents a savings of $55.43 simply by changing the time by 30 minutes.
Final Boarding Call
Although this method of setting the time to intervals of 30 minutes instead of on the hour to save money on renting a vehicle is not foolproof, investing a few extra seconds may be worth potentially saving you a significant amount of money…
…and this is in addition to the money which you could save money on rental vehicles by using the free service which is offered by AutoSlash.
Photograph ©2016 by Brian Cohen.
