Maybe you all know this already…but the discussion reminded me…you should check to see if your workplace has discount codes associated with them. My last two places to work, I can get a special corporate discount rate. Sometimes it is a significant savings. And, I confirmed in both cases that we are allowed to use the corporate discount rate even for personal use as long as we are still employees.
I generally book National, and I have saved quite a lot using my corporate savings code for personal use.
I should say, I have noticed that the AMOUNT of discount I get at MCO is pretty small compared to, say, Minneapolis. Which I guess makes sense, because they had an office near Minneapolis, so probably the extra discount was enough to encourage travelers to use National.
At MCO, I pretended to book a random week. Without my corporate code, the price was $544.37. With the corporate code, the same rental is $438.79. So more than $100 savings.
We’ve got a pretty nice one with national and enterprise. It usually starts out strong but then falls away to Costco being cheaper. My corp code does include the rental insurance, but so does my credit card.
I’m not a Costco member, but I am a BJ’s member. I never looked at them before, but just did. I can rent a bit cheaper from them…although through rental agencies I’ve not rented through before, like Budget and Thrifty. I’ll have to keep them in mind.
We typically use Thrifty on our every-other-year trips and have had no issues with them. I’m a Blue Chip member (no fee) so I can skip the counter but this last trip we wanted to add my BIL (fyi, no additional fee or paperwork for a spouse as an additional driver) so we had to go to the counter. We went to the garage counter, no wait at around 10:00 a.m. Easy checkout and easy check back in upon return. They are usually the cheapest I’ve priced out, including Costco.
Thanks for the prompt to check prices again! My 8 day Alamo rental via Costco went down another $80 to $283. This is my third rebooking for this trip. I think it started ~$400 when I initially booked in April/May.
Ok, cool! So prices keep collapsing until trip day Mine just spiked for some unknown reason, but 2 months out is in about a week, so I’m just sitting on my hands and not panicking!
I find that pricing definitely goes up on the weekends - perhaps because that’s a more common booking time, when people have time to think about trip details? I haven’t noticed other patterns in that way but I’m sure there are more
It spiked this past weekend, but it hasn’t come down from those prices. It was like if I booked last week, I’d have a better price than now. I’m just wondering if they’re trying to play some sort of FOMO game with me.
Adding in my two cents in case it helps anyone. I always use AutoSlash to track my rentals (and you can also use them for new rentals as well). National and Alamo both have last minute rates—usually you have to book a week in advance. My corporate rate always beats these but it may be helpful to some:
Mine just spiked for some unknown reason, but 2 months out is in about a week, so I’m just sitting on my hands and not panicking!