Quick Tips for Cheaper Car Rentals

As your travels take you further from the bustling metropolitan areas and into the more secluded, rural parts of your destination, renting a car becomes almost inevitable.  Signing up for local tour groups is certainly a viable workaround for this, with the caveat being that your schedule is decided for you by someone else, and often times your tour group is without the intimacy of just you and your travel companion(s).

When renting a car, it’s important to stay aware of a few basic tenets for cost-savings, things that go beyond simply knowing what the competing prices are.  Below is a quick list of the top things to take into consideration when looking at rental cars:

Ask for unlimited mileage.
This may sound contradictory, as it is an added cost, so make sure that you only do this when you know you’ll be driving a lot.  Even if you don’t see it as an advertised option, call and ask the agency directly.  If the response if less than helpful, simply tell them that you’ve already received an online quote from a competitor that is offering unlimited, and see if they will match it.

Nothing is “free.”
Well, rarely that is.  Certain discount clubs and promotional deals can be a good way to take advantage of legitimately “free upgrades.” When they’re offered out of the blue, like when the agency is out of smaller cars, you’ll often find that a small service charge is applied and the insurance rates go up. 

Go easy on the insurance.
In reality you don’t have to get any additional insurance, although I’m not necessarily saying you shouldn’t.  If you booked with a major credit card, most offer some form of protection (check with your card’s issuer first, especially when travelling internationally).  Regardless, the “top tier of protection” in most agencies, called supplemental liability, is rarely of valuable other than the warm fuzzy feeling that comes with being hyper-insured.  Agency claims of coverage up to a million dollars are technically true, but most don’t even come close to paying out a quarter of that, unless of course you perish in some horrific manner after crashing into—and burning down—an art museum.