You can use auto slash two ways. Number one is you can request a quote. We ask you where you're picking up, when you're picking up, where you're dropping off. And then we ask you which organizations you're a member of, which discounts you qualify for. So for example, if you're a AAA member or a Costco member, if you're a member of AARP, if you're old like me and you've got AARP membership, hey, that can get you a great deal.

And then what we do is we send you an email within about five minutes. We crunch the numbers. We let you know where the best deal is. You could go and you could go and crunch the numbers yourself. You can go and go to 10 different websites and try to beat our rate.

You can go and compare the AAA rate versus the Costco rate versus the AARP rate and maintain a spreadsheet. But it's unlikely you're gonna be able to find a lower rate than what we can offer. You're welcome to try. But the thing is, just because you have the best rate today doesn't mean you're gonna have the best rate tomorrow or next week or even the day before you pick up the car.

And that's why we offer a tracking function. And essentially what happens is after you book your rental, you track your reservation with us and we will keep looking for better deals right up until the day that you pick up your car. Rental rates fluctuate all the time. We will find you the best deal upfront, but oftentimes the customers who do the best with us are the ones who are tracking their reservation with us.

Some customers get three, four, five, sometimes 10 price drops over the course of a few months. - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. If you're new here, I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and I'm a diehard optimizer who loves doing all the research to help you get the best experience in life without the expensive price tag.

And today is no exception because we're gonna cover one of the top requested topics on the show, saving and getting deals on rental cars. And to do that, I'm joined by Jonathan Weinberg, who is the most knowledgeable person I have ever met on the topic. That's probably because over a decade ago, he took his knack for gaming the system and started Auto Slash, a company dedicated to finding customers the best possible deals when they rent a car.

And to date, they've saved customers over $100 million. We're gonna cover so much in this conversation, including discount codes for cheaper rentals, when you should look off airport to save, how signing up for different rental company programs can save you a ton of time at pickup, and whether you need to prepay for gas or get that costly insurance policy from the agency.

And that's not even scratching the surface. I seriously have pages of notes and questions because I wanna cover it all so you can save as much as possible on your next rental. So let's jump in. (upbeat music) Jonathan, thank you so much for being here. - Thanks for having me.

- Yeah, I'm excited. We've gotten a lot of requests to talk about rental cars and specifically a couple of requests to have you on as a guest. Someone actually emailed me and said, "Could you get Jonathan on?" I heard him on a podcast, it was great. I have a lot more questions, bring him on.

So you were one of the top requested people on one of the top requested topics. It is awesome to have you here. - I love it, thank you. Thanks for having me. - So I feel like a lot of people have hotels and flights figured out, but they still don't know much about rental cars.

I feel like the past two years have been a bit crazy for travel. What is the state of rental cars today? I've heard you a year or two ago say we're in this rental car apocalypse, but have things changed? Where are we now? - Yeah, we actually coined the term rental car apocalypse.

We were way out ahead of this thing. We were seeing sort of the bleeding edge of the problems in 2021 as spring came along and people started to get vaccinated and the whole rental car industry just basically imploded at that point. It was almost impossible to find rentals and things were going for $250 a day.

People were renting U-Haul trucks because they couldn't find rental cars. The good news is that things have gotten significantly better. We're definitely not back to quote unquote normal. Rates are still much higher than average, but the inventory situation has let up a little bit. The rental car industry, if we just do a little bit of mini history going back to the beginning of COVID, when COVID first hit, the rental car companies saw their demand drop about by up to 90% and they basically went into survival mode.

They had to sell off as many cars as they could as quickly as they could just in order to survive. And Hertz still lives today, but they went through a bankruptcy and the existing shareholders were basically wiped out. So, and there were a couple of other smaller companies that either went through reorganization or bankruptcy.

So the industry was reeling from that. But for the most part, the industry sold off inventory that it had to and it got healthy and demand was sort of right size for what the inventory was at the time. But if you fast forward to 2021, people started to get vaccinated.

They were just tired of being at home. They wanted to get out and the demand just completely outstripped the supply. And the rental car companies just assumed that they'd be able to acquire more vehicles when that demand came back. But the problem is that that idea ran headlong into the reality of this semiconductor shortage, this chip shortage.

And for those of you who don't know, there are, the average car has anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 computer chips in it. And if you can't get those computer chips, you're basically just looking at a giant doorstop with four wheels. And that's essentially what was happening with the auto manufacturers.

These cars were sitting on the lots half completed and they just literally couldn't get them into the dealerships in a completed way. And that was affecting the entire auto industry and no one more so than the rental car companies who needed these vehicles to service this demand that was quickly coming back.

- And so are we still in this state or what are things like now? I remember hearing, you know, states, entire states were sold out of rental cars. People were nervous that you'd show up and there's no car. Is it a little better now or a lot better? - You know, it's a little better, but interestingly that the problems have sort of moved and morphed.

Now there are strangely entire countries that are sold out of rental cars. And by that, I mean that almost the entire country of Canada it's almost impossible to find a rental car. Places like Calgary and Vancouver and Victoria and Toronto, just massive shortage of rental cars right now. And we're not quite sure why Canada is being hit so hard, but the US, the lower 48 states are in better shape, save for the national park areas, Glacier National Park, Bozeman, Montana, anywhere around the national park, people are really wanna get out in the great outdoors.

And I think that COVID has sort of shifted demand patterns a little bit less. People are traveling overseas, more people wanna travel domestically and we're seeing super tight availability around the national parks. I'm actually going to Glacier National Park tomorrow. And because I couldn't find a rental car around Glacier Airport, I ended up flying up to Calgary and then ended up kind of morphing it into a trip to Banff and Glacier because rental cars were better availability and better pricing up in Canada than they were here in the US.

But even up in Calgary now, it's impossible to find a rental car. So I just got lucky when I was looking. - So you just said something that's interesting. I feel like rental cars historically, maybe prior to the pandemic, were always this thing where it's like, well, I'm gonna book my flight, I'll book my hotels, and then I'm just gonna go get a rental car.

And I assume that it was actually a cheaper total package for you to go somewhere else, but you wouldn't have known that if you didn't look at the rental cars in advance. Where do rental cars fit in this? Do you think there's something people should be looking at before they even consider their flight or hotel all at the same time?

- Oh, absolutely. I mean, rental cars historically have been what I like to say, the red-headed stepchild to the travel industry and no ding against redheads out there. But people typically would go, and as you said, they'd book their flight, their hotel, and rental cars, they'd book it when they got around to it.

Well, you really need to turn that process on its head now. You need to look at rental car pricing and even more so availability first before you even book your flight. Last year, we had a lot of people who were telling us that they went and they booked flights, and then they realized that they couldn't get a rental car, especially in areas like Florida and Phoenix and Las Vegas.

And they basically canceled the trip because they didn't wanna be landlocked, they didn't wanna be stuck at a resort or not able to get around. So people essentially just, thankfully there was a flight flexibility in terms of cancellations and rebooking. So they decided to just move their trip later in the season because they couldn't get a car at the time that they originally wanted to go.

So people are starting to realize that the old rules don't apply anymore. The rental cars used to go for as little as $6, $8 a day, no longer. You're looking at basically 80 to $100 a day in many areas of the country. And if you're looking for like a minivan or a full-size SUV, anything that seats more than five people, good luck with that because you're gonna be paying through the nose if you can find one at all.

- Wow. And I live in the Bay Area where we have three airports. So I'm just thinking, gosh, I don't usually fly here, but if I did, it would at least be worth checking all three airports 'cause you might pay $50 more to fly to one, but you might save 30, $40 a day on a rental car if you need a car in the first place.

- Absolutely. And we always recommend to people that, check multiple options. That includes both airport and off airport. You can fly into the airport and if you're arriving during normal business hours, you can take an Uber or Lyft and head to an off airport location, oftentimes save a significant amount of money.

But the flip side is also true. People who will typically look to rent off airport, off airport isn't always cheaper and it's always worth checking the airports as well. So you wanna kind of cast a wider net and oftentimes that can save you a significant amount of money. - Yeah, and one thing I think I realized is off airport, sometimes it's not, the opening hours aren't as great as the airport.

The airport might be open 24/7, but you book off airport and you schedule a 9 p.m. pickup, maybe it's open, but check how late it's open 'cause if your flight's delayed and you can't get the car, it might be a little bit of a pain. - Yeah, general rule of thumb is off airport locations are typically open 8 a.m.

to 6 p.m. And it's interesting, one thing that changed with COVID and I'm not quite sure why this is, but 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. was normal operating hours, but a lot of locations were seeing 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. In fact, San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, there are no rental car, off airport rental car locations that are open past 5 p.m.

And that was not the case pre-COVID. So for whatever reason, they just decided to kind of scale back their operating hours and we're seeing that in a number of different cities. - So I wanna walk through a bit of the process of all the things, you know, you gotta book the car, you gotta show up and rent it, maybe you wanna return it late.

So I'll start with when you're just searching, I wanna understand what is it about rental cars and maybe the way the backend inventory works that makes it so hard. I know sometimes I'm looking for a car, I go to a rental car website, and if you wanna search off airport, you know, I think at Enterprise, you have to search airport or location by location by location.

I know there's aggregators to search, but before we even get in, is there a reason why rental car searching is so much harder than maybe flights or hotels? - We've had people ask us before, can I do kind of like a flexible search and show me the cheapest rental car within an entire state?

But it's not so easy because you're typically searching for anywhere up to, you know, 25 vehicles per search. The date and time make a difference in terms of when you're picking up, when you're returning. There can be a huge amount of results that come back. So rental car searching is a fairly intensive process.

Unlike a flight where, you know, there's a limited number of flights per day, there's a limited number of, you know, your cabins, your either, you know, business class, premium economy, economy with rental cars, you've got like 50 different vehicle types. Changing the pickup time by even a few minutes can change the price.

And then you've got, you know, sometimes hundreds of locations in a particular area. So typically a rental car search will operate up to 25 miles from a given radius, but there isn't any way to do a true flexible date search or flexible location search with rental cars just because the amount of data that's coming back is tremendous.

And that's one of the things that, you know, we deal with at AutoSlash is, you know, how to take this gigantic results set and make sense out of it and try to return the most accurate results to folks that are as close a match to what they were looking for as possible.

Like, for example, you know, should we return a result that is 10 miles away from the location the user requested if it's, you know, 20% less or does the user care more about convenience than they care about price? You know, that's the type of questions that we struggle with all the time.

It's like, how do you surface the most accurate results for those users that is, you know, most likely to meet their needs? - One hack, and I think I heard it from you on another podcast was that if you are trying to rent a car and save money and you look off airport, sometimes you can actually, you might have to be inconvenienced on the pickup, but you might not pay any extra to return it to the airport.

So you might be able to avoid half the inconvenience. - Right, and there's so many different permutations if you think about it, because you can rent off airport, return on airport. You can rent off airport, return off airport. You can rent on, return on, rent on, return off. I mean, and you know, there's all sorts of, you know, you can play around with different locations.

So it's a question of, okay, well, how far do I want to take an Uber and how much is it going to save me? You know, is it worth taking Uber 25 minutes away? But, you know, if you need, if you're going on a road trip and you're going to have that car for two weeks and you save yourself $800, you know, it's almost like a no brainer, but yet we have customers that say, "Hey, I don't want to take an Uber for 25 minutes and I'll pay the extra $800." That's not me.

I'm a cheap SOB, but you know, hey, it's like, you know, whatever the customer wants. - And is there a way to search airport and off airport anywhere? I haven't ever seen that. How does that work? Is it just two searches? - Typically two searches. That's something that we're actually working on so people can let us know that, you know, airport, off airport and airport will work for them.

We can do a flexible search, but we kind of do that automatically. Auto search works a little bit differently from other websites in the sense that if you put in a request to our site and we don't find availability, we will automatically switch that request to where we do find availability.

So for example, if you're requesting a car off airport and you're looking to pick it up at eight o'clock PM, you know, off airport location to close, we'll automatically move it to the airport or we'll adjust your time. If you're looking to pick up a minivan at the airport, there's no minivans available, we'll switch your request off airport.

If you go to any other car rental website, they basically just say, "Sorry, no results found." We've actually got a team behind the scenes, sort of a magician behind the curtain that looks at your request and says, "Hey, why didn't this request return any availability? What can we do to get this person into a vehicle?" So that's something where we're kind of mating the human touch along with the technology in order to find customers the best deal, or in some cases, find any deal.

Because these folks, many of them, they're, you know, we're like their 10th stop. They've gone to 10 other websites, they're looking for availability. All 10 websites say, "No availability found." AutoSlash will come back and say, "Hey, we adjusted your request slightly. We've actually did find availability. You may have to pick up a little bit earlier.

You may have to drop off a little bit later. You may have to switch vehicle types, but here's the closest match to what we could find to what you originally requested." - That's great. And you said people search all over. Does it actually matter with rental cars where you end up ultimately booking?

Obviously, I know you'd probably prefer everyone book on AutoSlash, but are there different rates on different sites, whether it's directly with the agency or on an OTA? - It can make a difference. We try to have the best rates in the industry, prepaid rates versus post-pay rates. We're not a big fan of prepaid rates, at least not ones that you can't cancel without a penalty.

We believe that pay later is a much better option because you can cancel and rebook anytime a better deal comes along. And that's one of the primary things that we've kind of pioneered a niche for ourselves with that. But yes, you can save money in some cases, things like Priceline Express deals or Hotwire Hot Deals.

If you're willing to lock yourself in, you can plan a better deal. So yeah, it does make a difference where you book and what price you're gonna get. Ultimately though, the rental is gonna be confirmed with the car rental company. You're gonna get a confirmation number from the car rental company.

So it doesn't really matter where the initial booking was made. You're gonna be able to take advantage of the benefits that are afforded to you by the rental car company, as long as you can like enter your loyalty number. And that's something that you can do through auto slash, you can skip the counter with National, with Hertz, with Avis, you can earn points, you can get upgrades, that sort of thing.

The rules are a little bit different with prepaid rentals, but ultimately it does make a difference where you book is the short answer. - Yep, and one thing I've noticed when I was booking rental cars is that the various discounts from programs, whether it's Amex or your employer or Costco or something like that, without those rates, like they can have a huge impact.

Is it almost fair to say, like if you're not booking with any of those and you're eligible, you're probably not gonna get the best rate? - Oh, absolutely. If you're not using a discount code, you're leaving money on the table. If your employer has a discount code, it's certainly one place that I would start.

The great thing about auto slash though, for those people who don't have an employer discount code or even who do have one, but it may not necessarily be the best deal, is that you use auto slash, because what we do is we give you a bunch of checkboxes through our wizard, we call it our quote wizard.

And that's just like a little mini interview that takes you through what your rental needs are. And if you're a member of Costco, AAA, AARP, United Airlines Frequent Flyer Program, whatever organizations that are out there that may provide a discount, you can just check those boxes and we'll compare all those rates side by side.

In addition to all the coupons and discount codes that the rental car companies publish on their own websites, and some of them that were not well known, they publish them on their Twitter feeds, or we get them an email, or we find them through other customers will let us know sometimes.

So computers are very good at doing a lot of analysis very quickly. So yeah, you could break out your Google sheet or Excel, and you can start searching through AAA.com and costcotravel.com and AARP and Expedia and Priceline, but you're just gonna end up wasting a lot of time and you're probably not gonna end up finding the lowest rate possible.

AutoSearch can do that in about 30 seconds and then send you an email. So it saves you not only money, but time as well. You kind of get your life back and not have to bother with that. We've had a lot of customers who've told us, "Hey, I used to go and spend a half an hour "at least on each rental trying to find the best deal.

"And then I realized that I couldn't beat you guys "at the end of the day. "So I just stopped trying." I mean, that's what we love to hear when people really realize the utility of the service. - Yeah, do you actually need to have all those discounts in advance?

Or could I say, "Hey, search the Costco rate "or the AAA rate. "And if you happen to save me $300 on a rental "over the course of a week, "it's worth it to just go sign up for AAA "or sign up for a Costco membership." - Yeah, AAA is a no brainer.

I mean, AAA is very inexpensive and sometimes the rate can be cut in half, literally. Costco is, I would say, a close number two. Costco has some great deals with some of the major rental car companies. The interesting thing though, is that Costco works with certain companies and AAA works with other companies.

So for example, AAA currently works with Dollar Thrifty and Hertz, all part of the Hertz organization. Whereas Costco Travel works with Enterprise, Alamo, Avis, and Budget. So it may turn out that the AAA discount is great, but Hertz has a much better deal through AAA or another discount. So you really wanna cast a wide net and check both, and as well as check other discounts that you may be eligible for, because you just never know where you're gonna find the best deal.

Especially these days, availability can be pretty tight. So if you're looking for a minivan or a full-size SUV, it may turn out that only one company that Costco Travel works with has a full-size SUV and the price is exorbitantly high. Whereas Hertz, Dollar Thrifty all have full-size SUVs and one of them turns out to be a much better deal.

So you really wanna do your homework there. - I've talked to a lot of people recently who historically have used their employer codes and then maybe they don't work at that company anymore. They keep using them. Maybe they wanna search online for them and they've been kind of, at least in the recent past, getting kind of called out and it's like, "Hey, can you show us that you work here?" And they get in trouble.

Is that something that's changing or how have you seen people handle those situations or is it even worth the risk? - It's absolutely changing. Here in New York City where I live, Avis has got this big honking sign right in the front of their rental desk over there that says you will absolutely need to show some form of proof of employment if you're using a corporate discount code.

I know a few folks who have gotten called out on that and ended up having to pay like five times the rate because they couldn't show proof of employment. In fact, Avis and Budget, I believe both, they actually have warning on their website now. When you put in a corporate discount code, it warns you that you will be required to show proof and they will send you follow-up emails as well.

Back in the days when rental car rates were $20, $30 a day and the corporate rate was maybe $15 a day, they were just happy for the business. But now it's a significant difference. Rental car rates can be $125 a day and you've got some corporate discount code that knocks it down to a rock bottom price.

The rental car companies realize how much they're leaving on the table and they're very sensitive to that and they're telling their staff specifically, hey, enforce these rules, make sure that people are not taking advantage of the system. So people are getting called out, they are running into issues, they're either being denied or they're being forced to pay the walk-up rate, which can be fairly significant.

So is it worth it? Everyone's gotta make their own calculation. Obviously, if you're renting at an airport where you can skip the rental car counter, there often is less scrutiny, but that's not a guarantee that they're not gonna check the exit booth or something like that. Rental car companies do have security departments.

They have been known to put renters on the do not rent list for fraudulently using codes that they're not eligible for. But it's a personal decision at the end of the day, I feel. I mean, we never use corporate discount codes. We're only using discount codes that are available to the general public.

But I certainly will acknowledge that you can save a significant amount of money. Ideally, you'd use a corporate discount code that you're eligible for, but there are lots of folks out there who will just search random websites and plug codes in. And there is an element of risk to that.

- Yep, I haven't taken on that risk since leaving Google, but the Google rate was so good. And I even still have my badge. And I'm like, ah, maybe it's worth it, but I'm not sure. I also know the Google rate included car insurance, like it included the coverage.

And my understanding is that somebody, maybe even Google's picking up that bill, and that if you were in an accident, it could be a problem. Is that also true? - Yeah, that's absolutely true. You know, there are corporate rates that include a collision damage waiver and liability in many cases.

And everything is, you know, hunky dory until you go along and you get into an accident. And then all of a sudden, you know, the corporation gets a report and says, you know, this former employee or this person who was never an employee made a claim against the, and they're asking the, you know, Hertz is asking the company to, you know, kind of like foot a large bill and people start to investigate.

And that's where you can get up front in some trouble. So, you know, if you're gonna use a corporate discount code, certainly don't use one that includes insurance because you can't rely on the insurance paying out if you have an accident. You're kind of playing with fire there. - I wanna get to insurance, but you mentioned earlier that the time you pick up actually matters.

How does that, what if you find a better rate two hours before you land, but you know, you're not gonna be there? How much does when you book the time matter? - No, time can matter significantly. There's a lot of different dynamics to this. So I don't wanna get too far in the weeds, but I'll bring up a couple of different scenarios.

There are different rate plans. So for example, there are weekend rates where if you pick up after like 3 p.m. on Thursday and drop off before, you know, noon on Monday, you'll be on a weekend rate plan. Whereas if you're picking up earlier than that, you're on what's called a weekly rate plan or daily rate plan.

A lot of times when you're on the border between these daily, weekly, monthly rates, the rates can change significantly, sometimes much higher, sometimes much lower. So it always pays to play around a little bit. We recommend that people try adding a day, subtracting a day. You know, if you have flexibility, it's always worth playing around with the dates a little bit, especially if you're not picking up at an airport, those, you know, your arrival and departure times are not fixed.

Even playing with the pickup time by a half an hour. We noticed a few years back that certain rental car companies were offering lower rates if you picked up on the half an hour instead of on the hour. And that goes back to the rental car companies gaming each other.

There are automated rate shopping systems out there. There's actually a company called Rate Highway that many rental car companies use, or they had their own internal departments to do this. And what they do is they're constantly reshopping each other's rates. And they will go and they will check to see, like Hertz will check to see what Enterprise has for a one week rental picking up at LAX.

And if Enterprise is priced at like $300 a week, Hertz will price it at 290 a week. And then Enterprise will recheck Hertz and realize it's 290 and Enterprise will be 285. And it's sort of a game of leapfrog. And sometimes it's a race to the bottom. And we actually will see rates fluctuate quite substantially.

And I was shocked when I first got into this industry, I built like a proof of concept tool to see how well AutoSlash would perform. We knew that there was some rate volatility and my business partner said, but how much rate volatility actually is there? And I said, I'm not really sure.

I said, well, why don't we try to build a tool and test that out? And I was shocked the rates were all over the place. And I thought the tool was broken. So I actually went and repriced everything by hand and plugged it into Excel. And I didn't really understand why rates were all over.

And it took me until a few years later to really understand that the rental car companies are very competitive with each other. And there are basically three major rental car companies. You've got Hertz, which owns Dollar Thrifty. You've got Enterprise, which owns Alamo National. And then you've got Avis, which owns Budget and Payless.

And each of these three companies has various brands that they're positioning at different segments, different price points in the market. But that said, they're all competing with one another and sometimes even intra-brand. And if you can recheck prices frequently, that's something that you can use to your advantage. And with the rental car companies reshopping each other, they're trying to get one over on each other.

They're trying to get a leg up in terms of being able to steer a little bit more business their way. And that sometimes means playing around with the pickup times, the drop-off times, the vehicle types. There's a lot of ways that the rental car companies kind of game things in order to pull in more business.

And the savvy renter can use that to their advantage in order to try to find a better deal. - So let's say you find a rate that's 30 minutes earlier or two hours earlier, and you don't show up on time. Is it okay if you show up that day, but it's not the exact time you booked it?

- Right, so if you book with the major rental car companies, the big three or the nine brands that comprise the big three, you can pretty much show up anytime you want that day. So if you have booked a reservation for a 12 o'clock pickup, you can show up at 7 p.m.

and no one's gonna say boo about it. In fact, you can show up for a 12 o'clock reservation at 9 a.m. and they're not gonna say, "Oh, wait, we have to get your car ready for you." There's no getting your car ready. You show up and they give you one of 100 cars that are sitting on the lot.

It's not like when you make the reservation, they put this car aside for Chris. Chris wants an intermediate car. Okay, this Toyota Corolla over here is gonna be for Chris. No, it's like you show up and go grab whatever you want. I mean, if it's National or Alamo or even Hertz Ultimate Choice, they just let you loose in the lot and you grab whatever's there.

And maybe there's no midsize cars there. So they say, "Oh, grab a full size." It's a very loosey-goosey type system, which is good for renters because it means there's a lot of flexibility in terms of what you can do. But it also means that in some cases, there's overbooking situations that, we can talk about that later.

But specifically with regard to pickup and drop-off times, within 24 hours, you have a lot of flexibility in terms of when you can pick up. The discount brands, they're not quite as flexible. There may be like a two-hour window or a three-hour window. And outside the U.S., it can be different as well.

But if we're talking about renting in the U.S. or Canada with the major companies, you can show up anytime you want. And if you happen to show up earlier than your reservation, you can pick up the car. You just have to keep in mind that rentals are priced on a 24-hour day.

So if you're picking up at 3 p.m. and dropping off at 3 p.m. three days later, and then you arrive five hours early, well, you're probably gonna end up paying for an extra day there. So that can come into play. - Are there any brands that, if you need to drop the car off a couple hours late, are better than others?

I know sometimes I've needed a car for like 26 hours, and I'm like, "God, is there a way to avoid "having to pay for two days?" - So the general rule of thumb is that the first hour, you're gonna pay a third of the daily rate. The second hour, you're gonna pay two-thirds of the daily rate.

And by the third hour, you're basically paying for an entire extra day. There is a little bit of variability between rental car company and location, but that's the general rule of thumb in terms of how they price it out. - Is there any grace period at all? Like, I know Hertz sometimes gives you like 59 minutes free or something.

- 29 minutes is the grace period for pretty much all. So as soon as you hit that 30-minute mark, they're adding extra charges. So if you can get there within 29 minutes of your, and remember, it's not your scheduled return time, it's 29 minutes from the time you picked up.

So if you're scheduled to pick up at 3 p.m. and scheduled to return at 3 p.m., but you picked up at 2.45 p.m., well, you just cut 15 minutes off of your grace period. So you've gotta make sure that it's related to when you picked up. And likewise, if you picked up a half an hour later than your scheduled time, well, you've got an extra half an hour buffer there, plus the 29 minute grace period.

So definitely pay attention to not necessarily what you booked, but what the checkout time is on your rental car contract. - And do any of the discount programs, whether it's USAA or AAA or anything, include extra grace periods? - So the Amex Platinum CDP, Amex Platinum Discount Code with Hertz, includes a four-hour grace period.

But it's important to remember that that's priced in to the rental when you book it. So for example, if you book a three-day and four-hour rental, you're only paying for three days. It doesn't mean that you can book a three-day and four-hour rental and then show up three days and eight hours later and think that you're, oh, okay, my scheduled return time is, it's not 12 p.m., it's 4 p.m., but you show up at 7.30.

Well, you've already used the grace period in terms of how they priced it in the original booking. So, but that's how it works. You can, and that can save you a significant amount of money because oftentimes, if you're kind of ending up in an extra day, or even if you're renting on a weekend rental and it kind of throws you into a weekly rental with that extra four hours, by using the Amex Platinum CDP, that can make a huge difference in terms of what the rate is when you're on those borders between different rate types.

- And will you guys, is that one of the options when I'm searching on AutoSlash? - It is, yep. - Cool. And then last one on the rate times, is it ever cheaper to add, like let's say I'm renting for six days, is it ever cheaper to add a seventh and make it a week?

Or how does the weekly rental rate work? - Absolutely, but it's usually not six to seven. It's usually renting from like between four and five days. So typically, anything five days or greater is considered a weekly rental in rental car industry, but it's slightly more granular than that. Anything above, remember we said earlier that if you return three hours late, then it's an extra day.

So really anything that's four days and three hours or greater is basically means you're renting for five days and that's throws you into a weekly rate. So for example, a four day and two hour rental is essentially a daily rental rate, but four days and six hours is a weekly rental.

So that's something where you definitely wanna try to add a little bit of time or add an extra day or so and price it out because it can make a significant difference. - That's great. We jumped into a bunch of different areas, but you talked about the three major brands.

I'm curious, two questions. One, how do they stack up? Like I know what the difference is between flying on Spirit and flying on virtually any other airline. What is the difference? Yeah, I know, it's not something I wanna experience again, but what's the difference between these different rental car brands?

Like what makes a four or five star brand versus a two star brand? I know you guys rate them on the site, but I don't know if I totally understand what would change my experience. - Well, from our perspective, National really sets the standard. Far and away, National is the best experience, both from the perspective of being able to choose your own vehicle in the Emerald Isle, as well as just an overall service perspective.

I tend to run for National when I can, when it's a good deal. I find that National's vehicle selection is the best. I find that they have late model cars. I find that overall, it's generally a non-event, which is exactly what you want when you're renting a car. I would say that Hertz follows closely behind.

Hertz was not great until they introduced Hertz Ultimate Choice. Hertz Ultimate Choice is available at all the major airport locations that basically lets you choose your own vehicle, similar to the way that National does it. It's not quite as good as National's offering, but it is quite convenient and you'll get on your way fairly quickly.

And I would say Avis comes in a close third, but Avis doesn't have a similar offering in terms of picking your own vehicle. So typically they're assigning you a vehicle. They have something similar where you can choose it in the app, but it never quite works seamlessly. So that's something that I think Avis could definitely put some work into and develop a similar service.

Rounding out the next tier down, I would say that Alamo and Budget are pretty comparable. I'm pretty happy with Alamo. Alamo is similar to National. They let you choose your own vehicle. So for example, if you reserved a standard SUV, they'll send you out to the lot and there'll be a row of 50 standard SUVs and you can go choose from those.

Got pretty convenient kiosks where you can just go check in. You don't have to wait out line. That makes it convenient. Budget offers what they call fast break service, which will either a separate line or you can go directly to the rental car lot so that'll get you on your way quicker.

But it's not quite as seamless as the major companies, as far as Hertz and National. And then you've got Dollar, Thrifty, Payless. These are the more deep discount brands. The savings can be significant there. Some of them do offer express service to let you get on your way more quickly, but the vehicles tend not to be as low mileage and as recent vintage.

And the service levels tend to be a little bit longer. And waiting on line can also be a significant issue. Theoretically, you can take advantage of these loyalty programs. Dollar has express service. Thrifty has blue chip. Budget has fast break, but they're not quite as consistent as some of the major companies are in terms of getting you on your way quickly.

You can wait on line in many cases. - So is it safe to say the more premium brand you rent with, the primary benefit is being able to pick your own car and being able to skip the line? Are there other benefits to think about? - Yeah, that's correct.

Other benefits include earning points or credits for free days. National has one of the best programs out there in terms of getting rental car credits and earning free days. They also have a program called One-Two Free, which means that if you have two completed rentals, you can get a third day for free, which is pretty generous.

Hertz has devalued their program many times over the years. Davis's program, they do offer points, but those points are not worth a whole lot. In many cases, you can do better by crediting your rentals to frequent flyer programs and hotel programs and that sort of thing. So I would say that the upgrades are significant in terms of being able to choose your own vehicle.

You can reserve a mid-sized car and oftentimes drive away in a full-size or premium car, even an SUV. But being able to skip the counter from my perspective is number one, because during COVID, you see these lines, there can be 20, 30, 50 people waiting on line and it can be two hours to get a car.

Time is money. I don't really wanna be standing around in an airport waiting to get my vehicle. And it's really nice to be able to walk into the Atlanta Car Rental Center and see a line of 50 people walk right past them, walk to the lot, jump in a car, speed off.

And before these guys even move one line placement, you're already in the exit booth and on your way. So it's nice. It's something that we recommend to all of our customers doing. It's a no-brainer. Your rental car programs are free to sign up for. I'm not really sure why anyone would not do it, but people can sometimes, they don't think about it ahead of time and then they end up paying for it, fortunately.

- And what about the loyalty programs with kind of status that you can earn, whether it's by renting a lot or through a credit card, do the status loyalty programs do much? - The status programs will get you better vehicles. In some cases, National's executive program is pretty good.

You definitely have nicer vehicles in the executive section. Hertz has the President's Circle option. So for example, if you're a Capital One Venture X cardholder, you'll get upgraded to Hertz President's Circle. If you're a Visa Infinite cardholder, you can get National Emerald Club Executive. It does make a difference.

And as far as these credit cards, it may be cards that you already have in your wallet already. So it is a no brainer just to upgrade your status or sign up if you're not already a member and get that status. And they will also match status membership. So you can email them and you can show proof of a status with at least status of one company.

And they oftentimes will upgrade you and then you can use that status upgrade to a third company. So it is pretty easy to do. The rental car companies, the status doesn't cost them anything. They want you to rent from them. They feel like, okay, if we give you Emerald Club Executive status, you're more likely to rent from us because you think you're gonna get a better vehicle.

And in fact, you are. So they would rather have a lot of elite members and get a lot more business than being stingy with the statuses. - So when you skip the line, you go out to the lot, you see 30, 40 cars. I always struggle. I'm looking here, I'm like, I don't know anything about these brands.

How do you decide which of the nine different mid-size or intermediate or full-size cars to pick from? Is there some rule of thumb? How do you pick a car? - You know, I've got my own personal preferences. I mean, if I see a BMW or Mercedes there, you know, I'm probably making a beeline for that.

I enjoy driving SUVs more than I do sedans. So, you know, that's definitely something I'm looking for. Jeeps are always nice. Some people don't like the driving, but I enjoy them. Sometimes you see convertibles in ultimate choice and executive area. But, you know, if you've got a lot of similar vehicles, a lot of times, you know, you walk out there and it's a sea of Camrys or a sea of Ultimas, and they all kind of look similar.

A lot of times I'll open up the door, I'll look at the mileage. It's not always easy to tell from the outside which ones have, you know, 3,000 miles on it versus 33,000 miles on it. So I'll look at that. Oftentimes I'll also look at the tires. You can tell very quickly how much wear a car has by how much tread is left in the tires.

And in fact, even in a dark lot, I don't even need to look at it. I can actually take my hand and I can kind of put my fingers in there and I can see how much tread is left in the tire, especially if I'm driving in an area where it's going to be raining or snowy.

You definitely want to make sure that you drive out of the lot with something that has a lot of tread on it. You don't want to have ball tires and go skidding across the highway. So it's definitely something I consider, especially in bad weather. And then the other thing is just, you know, in terms of amenities, some of these vehicles are better outfitted in terms of their entertainment systems.

Do they have Bluetooth? Can I pair my phone to it? Do they have an AUX port if I want to plug in, you know, my phone or something else? So it's a lot of times a matter of personal preference, but I would say go for the low mileage vehicles and go for something that, you know, has the amenities that you'd like to be driving.

- Yeah, I think sometimes I forget that you can just open the door and look, is there a little Bluetooth sticker? Is there a USB charging port? All those kinds of things. So like, that's a great tip. What do you think of the kind of non-traditional rental car companies, maybe the Silvercar, the Turo, or things that kind of don't usually show up in the search, but have a different experience?

- Well, you mentioned Silvercar first. Silvercar was a good idea. I liked them. I liked them much more when they were at convenient airports and now they've sort of been banished to Audi dealerships in many cases in far flung areas. I don't really see Silvercar as being something that's gonna be relevant in the future.

I think that they're sort of a backwater at this point. You know, they still exist and it's great for dealership rentals if you live close to a dealership, but you're not gonna be landing at an airport and then running over to the Silvercar dealership in most cases just because they're not that convenient.

Turo is a good option. You can get a better deal. I think that people sometimes, you know, have one experience and they say, oh, you know, I rented from Turo and it was great or it was terrible or I got a great deal and I'll never rent from another, the major rental car companies again.

But, you know, the reality is that you need to always check and see what the availability and what the pricing is. I mean, on one hand, Turo could be way less than renting from a traditional car rental company. In other cases, it could end up being a lot more, but you also have some risk with Turo as well.

And this is, we saw this a lot with COVID, especially in Hawaii where people were renting from Turo hosts, as they call them, and the host was canceling on them either at the last minute, meaning the day that they're flying in or within a week. And because the Turo host realized that they could get a lot more money for their car when rental car prices were, you know, streaking into the stratosphere, these Turo hosts who had, you know, rented the car for let's say 40 bucks a day had sellers remorse and realized they could rent the car for $90 a day.

So they would just cancel on the existing renter and say, sorry, car wasn't available. And then the renter would be stuck and then there would be nothing available through the traditional rental car companies or prices would be much higher. So it's something that you do need to take into account.

It can be convenient. Sometimes the Turo hosts are willing to drop off cars at airports or at different locations. Other times you've got to, you know, wait around for them and, you know, maybe they're a little late in arriving. So, you know, it's not right for everyone, but it can be a good deal in certain cases.

So it's worth shopping around, but it's definitely a little bit more effort. You're not gonna, you know, land at the airport, jump on the shuttle bus and be on your way. And, you know, in two minutes, like you would with some of the more convenient airport rental car companies.

Another one that we really like that we started to work with recently at Auto Slash is called Kite, K-Y-T-E. And Kite's got a pretty awesome model. They will drop off the car at your home or business to you. They call them Kite surfers. They're basically gig workers and they will bring the car from a nearby lot and they'll drop it off.

I use them here in New York City all the time. I schedule a drop off for let's say 10 a.m. someone shows up in front of my apartment building with the car. I quickly show them my driver's license. I sign on my phone and then I just drive off.

And then I schedule the return for whenever I want. Someone will be here to pick up the car again. There's no rental office. I don't, I never wait on line. Super convenient. They fill up the tank at market rate. They charge you for the actual price of the tolls.

You really don't have to do anything. It's just kind of a no brainer. So it's a really convenient service. I believe they're in 13 cities right now. Primarily operate off airport, but I believe at LAX in San Francisco, they have some options for a nearby lot where you can pick up the car from them where they stage those cars.

So I think it's a company that is new, but I expect some pretty significant things for them in the future. So worth checking out. - What do you think about when you're booking, and I don't know if this shows up on auto slash, but sometimes it's like, we're not gonna tell you which company this is, but the rate's better.

- Yeah, so those are called, are known as what's called opaque rentals. And basically those come with significant penalties in terms of cancellation. Actually, they come with the penalty of no cancellation. Essentially you pay them and they tell you which rental car company it is after your book, and then you are not allowed to cancel or refund your reservation or change it even under any circumstances.

So if you're absolutely 100% sure that you're gonna be going on the trip and you're gonna need that rental car, it can be a good deal. If you're happy with all the choices at the bottom tier, you know, it may be like Fox, Payless, Advantage. If you're not happy with one of those three companies, then don't rent from them because in Murphy's law, you're probably gonna end up with a company that you don't like.

I have less of an issue if it's, you know, one of the top tier companies, it could be Avis, National or Hertz. Or for example, sometimes the tier is Dollar Thrifty or Alamo, you know, all decent companies, you can save a significant amount of money in some cases. But then again, you can also check AutoSlash first.

And it may turn out that just because it's an opaque deal that is better than the rack rate, AutoSlash may be able to find you a AAA discount rate or Costco and the price ends up being better. So, you know, they have their place. We tend to shy away from them, but especially booking last minute where, you know, it's unlikely that you'll be able to find a better deal by repricing it, you know, for another few days.

It could be worthwhile. But the important thing to remember with those rentals is that you cannot skip the counter. You have to go to the rental car company. So if you show up and there's 50 people online, there's no way to skip. You're not gonna earn loyalty points. You're not gonna get upgrades.

You're not gonna be able to choose your own car. So it's more of a, you know, of a deep discount leisure type rental. And you have to understand what you're getting yourself into if you take that deal. - There's one other kind of rental car company that I don't know if I understand.

And maybe it's unique to LAX, but I was helping our au pair try to book a car in LA. And I found all these random rental car companies that had some kind of search on their website, but when you book, it almost seemed like you were just kind of submitting a form online.

And I wish I knew the names of them, but they seem to have rental cars. They seem to have competitive prices, but I just kind of felt like I was filling out a web form and I had no conviction that the car would actually show up or that the company even existed.

Have you seen any of these? Are they real? Are they trustworthy? - Well, you're right to worry. I think that typically these are broker websites and what they're doing is they're taking your request and they're farming it out to a bunch of little small mom and pop type rental car companies around the LAX area.

And then they're sending you quotes. Those quotes may be significantly less than what you can get with the major companies, but they also come with some significant caveats in terms of you may end up getting a vehicle that's much higher mileage, much older. The service levels are not gonna be great.

You may end up being on the hard sell in terms of insurance. They may force you to take insurance even if you already have insurance through, for example, your credit card or your personal auto insurance policy. So these are sort of the bottom feeders in the rental car industry.

It's something that we definitely tell people to shy away from. There really isn't, in this day and age, any reason why you can't get an instant price and rent with a company that is reputable. I'm not saying that these companies are not reputable, but in some cases, they're all small shops that may have significant issues.

So you have to be very careful. If you look at the Better Business Bureau ratings and the consumer boards, you'll find that some of these companies are very uneven and it's hard to know exactly who you're renting from because they change names, they move around. One company represents another.

You think you're renting with company A, but it's actually being serviced by company B. So there can be issues with those. - Okay, so let's talk about, you get to the airport. You know, one thing that I think COVID has left as a fear in my mind, and maybe you'll say the fear is gone, don't stop worrying about it, is that you show up and there's no car available.

Is that still a thing where car rental companies oversell their inventory and you show up and there's nothing there? - It is a thing. I like to tell people that the vast majority of renters, the number of people who show up and they don't have a car available to them is a fraction of 1%.

That's a little consolation though when you are the 0.002% of the people that show up and all of a sudden the rental car company has mismanaged their inventory and they run out. They do often oversell their inventory. The no-show rate in the rental car industry can be upwards of 30%.

So they're going to oversell to a certain degree to try to get as close to 100% utilization as they can. Usually it's not an issue. Some companies are better than others with it, but it can happen. Sometimes what you end up having to do is wait around until more cars come back.

We've seen situations where you have 20, 30 people online and no one's getting a car for two hours. It does happen. It's uncommon. People sometimes ask me, well, should I book with multiple companies in order to increase my chance of getting a vehicle? That's a hard one to answer.

I hesitate because I don't want to exacerbate the problem in the industry and lots of people making multiple reservations that they're not going to show up for is really just compounding the problem. But in some cases, if you have to be somewhere, if you're traveling to a wedding and you're flying in two hours before the wedding starts and you just can't take any chances, hey, a backup reservation might not be the worst thing in the world.

So it's one of those things where everyone's got to make a personal decision. But I will say that it's not good for the industry if lots of people are booking and no showing all over the place. - Is there anything you can do to guarantee you'll have a car, call ahead, maybe prepay, have status with the rental car company?

- So first of all, prepaying doesn't really guarantee you anything. It's not like someone who shows up with a pay later reservation, shows up and they have one car left and the rental car agent says, oh no, no, I'm sorry. I have a Mr. Chris Hutchins coming in and he's got a prepaid reservation.

I'm putting this car aside for him. It doesn't really work that way. Whoever is first at the rental car counter, if they've got vehicles, they're gonna give it to you. So if you show up with a prepaid reservation, yeah, I mean, they need to get a car for you one way or another, but it doesn't mean you wouldn't necessarily have to wait.

Status does make a difference and the ability to skip the counter makes a difference. So even if you have just base status with the car rental company, if there's 20 people online and they've got three cars in the lot, hey, if you walk past that line and not have to wait for someone to service you, you can grab one of those three cars that are sitting in the executive aisle or ultimate choice or whatever and drive off.

And those people that are waiting online inside the rental car center, they're still waiting. So, and higher status can help. It's not a guarantee, but it's something that does make a difference. Calling ahead can sometimes help. If for no other reason than the rental car company can tell you that, hey, we don't expect there'll be any problem.

We have lots of cars in the lot, or, hey, we're short on cars. You may have to wait. It would be better if you could show up a little bit earlier, that sort of thing. So calling is not a bad idea, especially if you're renting at an off airport location because they typically have smaller fleets.

So the local staff can advise you what the situation is. - And if you did show up and there was no cars, what would you do? - The rental car company is obligated to find you a vehicle. I mean, a rental car reservation is a binding contract, but that said, they can't make cars show up out of thin air.

In some cases, you're waiting around for other people to return vehicles. In other cases, they may be able to move vehicles from another location, or they may be able to send you to a nearby location. Technically, the rental car company should pay for cab or Uber fare if you've got to go to a different location, or they should take some money off the rental.

Consumers, a lot of times the rental car company employees just don't want to deal with the situation. They're like, sorry, we ran out of cars, and there's nothing we can do. I mean, that's true to some degree, but the reality is that the rental car company has to provide you with a vehicle if you have a confirmed reservation, and they really should do everything in their power to try to find you a vehicle.

The entire area sold out, you just can't get blood from a stone, but if a nearby location five miles away has a vehicle, they should be able to send you over there. I mean, it's one of those cases where the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so we definitely recommend pushing the rental car staff and letting them know that, hey, I'm not leaving here.

I need a vehicle. You need to come up with some sort of option, and that also includes if the rental car company doesn't have the vehicle you reserved. Let's say you reserved a compact car, and they say, well, we have no compact cars. All we have is this compact SUV or this minivan or whatever, and there'll be an upgrade charge for that.

Like, no, there's no upgrade charge. Like, if you don't have the vehicle class that I reserved, you need to upgrade me to what you do have at no charge. We see this sometimes with different locations, and we tell our customers, no, you should push back. The rental car company is obligated to give you a vehicle, and if they can't provide the vehicle that you initially reserved, they should provide you a vehicle at the same cost, even if that is a significant upgrade for what you initially had booked.

- This happened to a friend of mine one time. They got to the rental car counter, and they're like, oh, man, I got a free upgrade to a Suburban from what I thought would be like a Nissan Altima, but I was like, well, gas prices are pretty expensive. That just became a more expensive rental.

Do you think you could negotiate a discount in that circumstance, saying this is gonna cost me more because of the cost of fuel? - Absolutely, and in some cases, you can ask the rental car company to throw in a tank of gas, because prepaid fuel is one option that the rental car companies will offer you.

It's never a good deal, but it's something that you can say, hey, throw in a tank of gas, because this gas guzzler is not what I reserved, and it's gonna cost me a lot more, so I'm willing to drive it around if that's all you have, but it shouldn't be at my expense.

It should be at your expense. Likewise, there's similar situations where you'll show up at the rental car desk, and they'll say, hey, you rented a compact car. We can offer you a full-size car for only another $5 a day, but what they don't tell you is they don't have the compact car that you reserved.

They only have full-size cars, so if you push back and say, I'm not interested in upgrading, or do you even have the compact car that you initially reserved, a lot of times they'll admit, hey, we're at a compact car, so why would you pay an upgrade fee when they have to give it to you anyway?

So that's another little hack that you should be aware of. - And you just mentioned never pay for prepaid fuel. I just wanna reiterate that, 'cause it came off pretty quick, 'cause that sounds like it's never a deal, even if you know you're gonna need to drive a lot.

- Yeah, so the rental car companies will try to entice you to purchase prepaid tank of gas, but what you need to realize is that you're purchasing the entire tank of gas. So if they say that this particular vehicle has a 18-gallon tank, they're charging you for 18 gallons at whatever their prevailing rate is, and they may say, well, we're giving it to you below the average price of the area, but remember that unless you use every drop of that 18 gallons, and you drive back into the rental car lot on fumes, you're basically leaving money on the table.

It's rare that you can time it so that you come back exactly empty. And in many cases, you can do much better if you use something like GasBuddy, or even if you're a Costco member, you can get discounted gas there. So it's something that, it's a convenient option, but it's definitely not the most cost-effective option.

We recommend that people fill up themselves, either on the way back to the rental car location, or if you've got an early morning flight, fill up the car the night before. Generally, as long as you're within 10 miles or so at the airport, the car's still gonna register full when you roll into the location.

- Let's talk about the one other big thing people are always trying to sell you, which seems like insurance. I've always operated on the assumption, just use my credit card that includes primary rental coverage, decline everything. Is that generally a good plan? - Yes, primary car rental credit cards, primary car rental insurance cards are definitely the number one way to avoid the rental car company's pricey insurance.

What most people don't realize is that if you own your own car, you're almost certainly covered when renting, and that includes for both collision and for liability. Credit card insurance also will help. In many cases, the non-premium cards provide secondary insurance, and that essentially means that the credit card will not pay out until your personal insurance pays out first.

But the premium cards typically include primary car rental insurance, which means you do not have to file a claim with your personal insurance company, and the credit card company insurance will pay out first. And the better cards have excellent insurance. There is really no reason to pay for the pricey insurance offered by the car rental companies.

That said, if you don't own your own vehicle, it probably means you don't have liability insurance, and your credit card insurance, while it will cover you for damage done to the rental car, it will not cover you for the accident that you had where your rear-ended a $90,000 Mercedes, and that insurance company is coming after you for the damage done to their vehicle, and/or if there were injuries to the other parties in the accident.

So you are taking a risk if you don't have liability insurance, and unfortunately, credit cards do not provide liability insurance. It's rare that you find a third-party company that will provide it. So that's something that you may have no choice but to take from the car rental company. Otherwise, you're adding some risk to your own situation.

- So if you don't own a car, you can still get the liability coverage from the rental car and decline the collision coverage, correct? - That is correct. - And is there any policy if you're a frequent renter and you don't own a car? Is there like a non-owner car policy that'll cover you in other cars?

- Sounds like you've done your research. Yes, there are non-owner policies, and if you are a frequent renter, it's definitely something that's worth looking into. Non-owner policies will cover you for both collision and liability. Typically, I would say that if you rent more than about five times a year, a non-owner policy can make a difference, and they will provide you with that coverage, the liability coverage and collision coverage.

And if your credit card has coverage, it will provide an extra layer on top of that as well. - Yeah, I'll flag one thing. I was looking at cars. This is again for my au pair's trip, and she was going to California and Nevada. And in Nevada, I believe all the rental cars come with some base liability coverage, which depending on your financial situation might just not be enough.

And so I do wanna ask about excess liability. Do you ever need more liability coverage than maybe what is included if it's mandated by a state? - It's important to remember that the rental car companies provide whatever the state mandated minimum is. And in California, that's essentially zero. California is somewhat unique in that regard, but even in other states where let's say it's $25,000 liability, not only is it low, but it also doesn't stop the car rental company from coming after you.

So for example, if let's say you get into an accident and you total someone else's car, and then there's a claim against the liability insurance, that's the rental car company's liability insurance. The rental car company owns the vehicle that is insured and they are the ones who are the beneficiary of it.

So if there's nothing stopping Avis from coming after you and saying, "Hey, yeah, our liability policy "covered 25,000 of this $40,000 claim, "but we're gonna come after you for the entire amount "because you weren't the insured, we were the insured." So they could charge you for the entire amount of the claim there, or they could just charge you for the difference between what the insured amount was and what the overage is.

There's no guarantee, and you are not the primary beneficiary of that insurance. Unlike if you take the policy from the car rental company, that typically will provide you with up to a million dollars in coverage. That's a pretty standard amount. - And what about, one thing I heard you talk about in the past that I didn't quite grasp, if you book with points, then you're not actually putting the rental on your card.

So are you actually still covered even if you're paying the taxes by your credit card's coverage? - You know, there's a lot of debate online about this. Well, you know, if you didn't pay for the entire amount of the rental on your card, then technically, you know, are you covered?

We've never gotten a definitive answer from this. The credit card companies don't typically, you know, wanna create a ruling, a precedent. But by and large, what we found is that if you use the card for the deposit and there's some form of fee put on the card, even if it's just the taxes, the credit card company insurance will kick in.

The other thing that I sometimes recommend is, let's say you rent on points and it's like a three-day rental. You could just, let's say you have an accident with the car, you could just return a day late and then that's gonna put some charge on the card. Or let's say the card is total, what you could do is you could take some options, add satellite radio or add a prepaid, you know, tank of gas or something like that.

And I said, you know, previously don't take the prepaid fuel, but hey, if that's a way to, you know, on a points booking to add some sort of tangible amount onto the credit card so the rental car company can say, "Hey, you did put the rental on your credit card "in terms of a charge." That may be the difference between, you know, getting paid or not.

It's not something I really think about all that often in terms of, will my credit card cover me if I was on a points booking? But it can, you know, get into the legalese in terms of what's covered and what's not. - What about, I know Amex has a rental car coverage, they actually cost money.

And I keep, I never understand why anyone would use that if assuming they had another card that included coverage. Is there ever a use case where that makes sense? - You know, the Amex coverage is called Amex PCRP or Premium Car Rental Protection. And the way it works is that you opt into it.

And anytime you rent, they're gonna charge your card for that amount. It can be worthwhile if you have no other coverage available because it is primary insurance and they'll charge you per rental, not per day. So it can work out well. But that said, I mean, some of the better cards out there like the Chase Sapphire, the Chase Inc, United Mileage Plus Explorer, the ones that offer primary car rental protection, that coverage is as good or better than what Amex offers as a paid fee.

I personally use the Chase Inc cards when I'm renting. I think it's excellent coverage and I've never had an issue with any claim being denied. So that's something that I feel is easy to recommend and I would not recommend the Amex coverage, especially 'cause there's an additional fee. You're basically, you're getting a premium card to get those benefits.

Why not take advantage of those benefits? - What about all these extra fees? So I know if I've had an extra driver, there've been times in the past I've had to pay when I was younger than I think 25, I had to pay fees. Are there any ways to get rid of those fees, avoid those fees, kind of get the rental down, even things like renting a car seat?

- The best way for under 25 renters to avoid that underage fee is to rent with Hertz and be a member of AAA. AAA members as young as 20 years old can rent from Hertz with the AAA discount code. It's not enough to just be a member of AAA, you have to rent using the AAA discount code and that will waive the underage fee, at least in the U.S.

for drivers 20 to 24 years old. It's not as easy with the other companies. You have to either be on some sort of corporate discount to waive the fee in other cases. Hertz far and away, I think they're really targeted that under 25 segment and quite successfully. So between the ability to waive the underage fees as well as the discount you get with AAA, it's a no brainer for young drivers to sign up for AAA.

You also mentioned car seat. Another nice thing about AAA discount is that it will give you one free child seat per rental and that can add up to up to $65. So if you're renting, if the car seat is, let's say, 13.99 a day in a one week rental, you can easily pay for the cost of the AAA membership.

So it's quite a good deal. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that if you have a problem with the rental car, you've got roadside service, if you get locked out, if you run out of gas, if you get a flat tire. A lot of people will call the rental car company if they have a flat tire and the rental car company is like, "Sure, no problem.

"We'll send out a tow truck for you." But what they don't realize is that rental car companies offer what they call roadside service as an additional fee. And that's akin to a AAA type service. And if they send out a tow truck to you, they're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart.

They're probably gonna charge you for that tow and for the time and probably for the new tire as well. Whereas if you've got AAA, hey, you call AAA. Let's say, the tire has just got a nail in it or whatever. AAA will tow you to the nearest garage. They'll plug the hole.

You return the car, not a big deal, no additional charge. Whereas if you go to the rental car company, you can end up paying three, $400 by the time the hole's said and done. So it's definitely something that you need to take into account. - What about extra drivers?

I know the one thing that I had, this is probably a two-part thing. We were picking up a car in Park City and it was me and my dad. And we looked and we were like, "Gosh, the line is so long." But there was no way to even add an extra.

So first off, there was an extra driver fee that I would have loved to avoid. Second off, there was no way that we could figure out how to add the extra driver after the fact or in advance. So we were gonna have to wait in the line. For either of those, is there anything we could have done differently?

- So it's a two-part answer here. So first off, for avoiding the extra driver fee, if you are a AAA member, you automatically get an extra driver. Technically, that driver also has to be a AAA member, but the reality is that there's spotting enforcement on that. If you are a Costco member and you're renting with the Costco discount code with Alamo, Avis, Budget, Enterprise, there is also an included additional driver.

If you are renting from various companies, for example, Avis, Budget, Alamo, National, Enterprise, they let spouses drive for free. And if you're renting in California, family members can drive for free. It's interesting, up until about a year ago, anyone could be an additional driver on a rental in California and the rental car companies were prohibited from charging an additional fee by law, but the rental car companies have been lobbying the state for a while.

So they kind of neutered that policy a little bit. Now, family members can drive for free, but if it's a non-related person, that person will have to pay an additional driver fee unless, of course, it's waived through the additional discounts that I spoke about. So that's in terms of getting the fee waived.

We've got a blog post on our site that goes through all the situations, where and when and how. Also, when we offer rentals to customers on our site, it'll tell you exactly which offerings include an additional driver, which offerings allow spouses to drive for free. So we try to be very transparent in terms of letting our customers know which deal provides which benefits.

As far as actually adding the additional driver, if you are a loyalty member, meaning if you're using Hertz Ultimate Choice, National Emerald Club, if you're picking your own vehicle and driving to the exit booth, there's no need to wait in line. The additional driver can be added on the spot at the exit booth.

So you don't need to wait in line and add the driver beforehand. It can be added at the contract. You just basically hand your driver's license through the window, as well as the additional driver, and they'll scan it right there at the exit booth. So it's pretty easy to do.

You can even add an additional driver after the fact. So for example, let's say you are flying out to Las Vegas and your friend is not arriving until the following day and you will pick up the rental car, you could actually go back to the rental car office or any office of the same rental car company, and you can go and add that person to the rental car contract after the fact.

And that means that if you're picking up at an airport, you could go to an off-airport location where it's not busy, and then the additional driver just has to show the driver's license. They will add the extra renter to the contract at that time. So there are a lot of different ways that you can slice and dice that.

- I know nobody wants to wait in line, but I do wanna know, if you are gonna wait in line, is there any trick to score a free upgrade? - There's lots of tricks, but the best trick is being nice. It's walking up there with a smile on your face and asking if you can get a complimentary upgrade.

If you have your heart set on an SUV and you've reserved a compact car, smile and ask them if it's possible to, they may have some SUVs available. You know, another little known trick is if you're in the lot and you're choosing your own vehicle, maybe there's a row of Camrys and there's really nothing appealing there.

Those lot attendants have a lot of leeway in terms of what gets assigned to what area. So you can speak with a lot of attendants. There are people who have been known to provide a little tip or maybe a donut or something like that, or a muffin if it's early in the morning.

You know, there's definitely ways to kind of get some special treatment there if you're creative about it. I needed a minivan. I had rented a mid-sized car and I really needed a minivan. And I spoke with one of the lot attendants and he hooked me up and it was definitely a good score.

So, you know, these guys wield a lot of power, but I would say overall, if you're renting at an airport, you really want to be a member of the loyalty program because being able to choose your own vehicle is key and even if that vehicle that you're interested in is not in that area, you can get a little bit of leeway by working the lot a little bit.

- Finally, you've got your car. What do you do if you see these dents, dengs? A lot of times the rental car person's like, "Oh no, it's so small, you don't have to worry about it." Is it important to document every little imperfection in the car? - If you're renting in the US and you're renting from a major company, you do not need to document every tiny little scratch and ding on the car.

You're gonna have scuffs typically at the back where people were dragging luggage out of the trunk. People open up car doors and parking lots and ding the driver's side and the passenger side doors. The general rule of thumb is unless the dent is larger than a quarter, the rental car companies aren't gonna bother you about it.

But that said, it's always good to protect yourself. I typically will either take pictures and/or just take a video. I put my iPhone into video mode and I literally just walk around the car and I take a video of the entire car. I take it from different angles. I make sure I catch the roof, the front windshield, and certainly any areas where there might be imperfections there.

And I try to capture the fact that I'm at the rental lot and I try to capture the employee in the video as well. Obviously there's privacy issues, but I'm not trying to call anyone out, but I wanna make sure it's obvious that this is what the car looked like when I picked up the car.

And this way, if you ever return the car and there's ever any question, you've got a video right there and say, "Look, I drove the car out of the lot. "This is the video. "It's a date, timestamp video "that shows exactly what the car looked like. "So how are you gonna accuse me of doing this dent "or the scratch over here?" So that's number one.

We also recommend doing the exact same thing at rental return. It's not uncommon. Well, I shouldn't say it's not uncommon. It has been known to happen where the rental car company will mail you days, weeks, even months later and say, "Hey, we found damage on a vehicle "that you previously returned.

"We're now gonna charge you $1,400 for this big dent. "And you know for a fact that you returned the car "and there was no problem with it." Having a documented video or photos that show that you're in the return area may go a long way to be able to dispute those sorts of claims if and when they do come up.

We also recommend taking a photo. We recommend taking your gas receipt and putting it on the dashboard and taking a photo of the dashboard, showing the mileage, the fuel level, and the gas receipt. This way, nobody can say you returned the car with less than a full tank of gas.

No one can say that the mileage was wrong or that you drove an excessive amount of mileage. So these are like small things that you can do to protect yourself. By and large, most people return and never have any issues, but it's important to protect yourself in those situations where it might happen.

- And you mentioned when you're in the US, how does all of this change internationally? - Well, it's important to remember that internationally, you may be renting from a large firm and that may be a corporate location. For example, in a lot of places in Europe, Hertz is basically, Hertz Europe is another company, but it's effectively part of Hertz Global Holdings.

But then there are other places where you're basically renting for a franchise. It's a local company that is subcontracting with the major firm, be it Enterprise or Hertz or Avis, and they're basically putting the brand logo and they're using the reservation system, but it's essentially a local company. And the policies and the tactics that they use may be quite different.

I'm always more careful. I'm more on my guard outside the US. I always take that extra time to take a full video, document every little scratch. We've definitely heard of situations outside the US where they'll go over the car with a fine tooth comb on return, and they'll try to get you for every little imperfection.

So it's something that you wanna be extra careful of outside the US. But generally, the major companies within the US, they're really not. They have better things to do with their time than get you on every little ding and dent, but that can be quite different elsewhere. - Any other major scams or tricks or tips or hacks for international rentals?

- I would say that, make sure you get a receipt. You really wanna check the rental car contract before you leave the rental car desk. Make sure that it matches with your originally quoted rate. And if there are any add-ons, make sure they're being charged correctly. And then you wanna get a receipt when you leave.

And this goes not only for internationally, this goes for the US as well. There have been many cases recently documented where the rental car company says, "Oh, just leave the car, we'll send you an email receipt." And then the person leaves and gets on the flight home and realizes three days later, they never got an email receipt.

And then all of a sudden, the fraud prevention department calls and says, "Hey, how come you never returned this car?" And the guy's like, "What are you talking about? "I returned the car three days ago. "Your agent checked it in." And they're like, "Well, we don't have any record "of you returning it." Well, the problem is that you left the lot without a printed receipt.

So that can be problematic. So we really recommend taking an extra couple of minutes and getting a printed receipt. This way you have documented proof that you returned the vehicle. Again, going back to that video that I mentioned earlier to make sure you cover any damage claims, that'll also show that you returned the car, the videos and the photos are date, time stamped.

You really wanna have just a little bit of extra evidence just in case things go sideways. And that's actually true if you're running internationally. - Okay, last international question. I was considering booking a rental car when we went on a trip to Cabo last year, and I was blown away that the rental cars were like a couple dollars a day.

This was still in the middle of COVID when it seemed like all anyone could talk about was expensive rental cars. We ended up not renting a car, but is there some trick there? - Well, the trick is that the rental car companies will give you an abnormally low rate and they'll basically force the insurance on you.

When renting in Mexico, liability insurance is mandatory and it technically is possible to get liability insurance on your own, but it's very challenging to do so. Some companies are better than others and some locations are better than others. Avis tends to be better. You'll see higher daily rates with Avis, but they will include liability insurance in their rates.

Whereas with, for example, national, you might see like a $5 a day rate, but you're gonna end up paying $25 a day in liability. So usually there's no free lunch. If you see an abnormally low base rate, you're probably gonna end up paying for it elsewhere. - I think we hit like every question I had on car rentals.

Hopefully if anyone's listening, that was all the questions you guys have ever written in and we covered it all. I wanna talk about two things. One, we talked about auto slash throughout this whole process. I wanna make sure people really get it because you don't have to actually use it to even book your reservation.

You can actually just submit the reservation, right? - Right, you can use auto slash two ways. Number one is you can request a quote. We ask you where you're picking up, when you're picking up, where you're dropping off, and then we ask you which organizations you're a member of, which discounts you qualify for.

So for example, if you're a AAA member or a Costco member, if you're a member of AARP, if you're old like me and you've got AARP membership, hey, that could get you a great deal. And then what we do is we send you an email within about five minutes, we crunch the numbers, we let you know where the best deal is.

You could go and you could go and crunch the numbers yourself, you can go and go to 10 different websites and try to beat our rate. You can go and compare the AAA rate versus the Costco rate versus the AARP rate and maintain a spreadsheet, but it's unlikely you're gonna be able to find a lower rate than what we can offer.

You're welcome to try. But the thing is, just because you have the best rate today doesn't mean you're gonna have the best rate tomorrow or next week or even the day before you pick up the car. And that's why we offer a tracking function. And essentially what happens is after you book your rental, you track your reservation with us and we will keep looking for better deals right up until the day that you pick up your car.

Rental rates fluctuate all the time. We will find you the best deal upfront, but oftentimes the customers who do the best with us are the ones who are tracking their reservation with us. Some customers get three, four, five, sometimes 10 price drops over the course of a few months, and that can get the price down by upwards of 40%.

And the great thing is you don't even have to book with AutoSlash to start with. You can book anywhere you want. If you're a big kayak fan, if you wanna book with Costco Travel, if you wanna book directly with National, go for it. Book your reservation wherever you want.

Come to our website, click on Track My Rental, and it's a free service. We'll keep checking for better deals and we'll let you know if we can find a lower rate. So it's one of those things where it's a no-brainer. You have nothing to lose and everything to save.

- And how do you guys make money? - We make a small commission on each rental. It doesn't cost the renter anything, but we work with various partners in the industry and we're making a small commission on the rental for the ability to go and find those great deals for you.

- And how often do customers save money on price drops? Is this like one in a hundred people the price comes down or closer to almost everyone? - Two out of three people will save money on a rental via price drops if you're booking more than a week out.

So the savings can be significant. Typically, we will save people up to 30% off their initial booking. You will likely save another 20% if you're tracking the price with us. - And is there any stat you guys track of all the total dollars you've saved people? - We've saved people over $100 million.

We've been in business for about 12 years now and the savings exceed $100 million at this point. - That's amazing. Okay, so we talked all about rental cars, but I gotta ask, what about other things? Hotels, airfare, any tricks there? - It's interesting you mentioned hotels. We've got a new site called Hotel Slash.

Hotel Slash is intended to get people great deals on hotels, just like cars. It works a little bit different in the hotel industry than car rentals. We're not applying coupons, discount codes. We're working with various partners in the industry to get the best possible deals for folks. But we're also offering, similarly to Auto Slash, a tracking function.

And that works whether you're booked with us initially or if you booked elsewhere, if you wanna go book with Booking.com or Expedia, you can come and track your hotel reservation with us and we'll let you know if we find a better deal. It's a great way to save money.

There is price volatility on the hotel side as well as the car rental side. So we help get a great wholesale rate up front and then we track the price of that rental. And if we find a better deal, we'll let you know so you can rebook. So it's a great way to save additional money.

- I've always told a lot of people that if you're booking hotels, there's usually a decent advantage of trying to book directly because you wanna earn points, you wanna earn stuff like that. Is that the case with you guys? Can you still put in a loyalty number and earn points on your reservation?

- So we don't offer the ability to put in a loyalty number, but oftentimes when you arrive at the hotel, you can ask to have them put the loyalty number on the reservation. It's not guaranteed. Some hotels will be willing to do it. Some hotels won't, but it's certainly something that you can try.

As far as getting upgrades and that sort of thing, you can get an upgrade if you're using your loyalty membership. But then again, if we're able to save you 30% off the cost of the hotel reservation, you know, it may be worth the savings there. So we always recommend trying it both ways.

And if you wanna book directly with the hotel, nothing stops you. You can always track it with us and we'll let you know if we find a better deal. If we find you a discount that's, you know, maybe 30 bucks off your existing reservation, maybe you decide it's not worth it, you wanna earn points.

If we find your rate that's $350 lower than your current reservation, a lot of folks will be tempted by those savings. So, you know, we don't wanna tell folks what's right for them. We just wanna present the savings that everyone can make their own informed decision. - I just went to the website for AutoSlash and I realized, okay, that's why I never heard of HotelSlash.

It's not promoted on the AutoSlash site. So I went to a HotelSlash and you need a code. Is that something that you could provide or how do people get to check this out? - So we're at the end of our beta stage right now. We're gonna be rolling out HotelSlash publicly pretty soon.

It is gonna be a membership-based service, but we're offering an early access code for all the listeners for your blog. So you can put in an early access code of all the hacks. No spaces, A-L-L-T-H-E-H-A-C-K-S, just one long string. And that will get you a lifetime access to HotelSlash.

You will never have to pay a membership fee. You can request a code and it'll automatically sign you up. And it's a great way to save money on hotels. We're signing up. Even if you're not looking to stay right now, you may be looking to reserve a hotel in the future.

So signing up now will get you that free access grandfathered in forever. - That's amazing. Okay, I'll put the link to that. And a lot of the stuff we talked in the show notes, some of the blog posts you mentioned, I'll try to find it all so people have that all there.

Any other favorite travel tricks, hacks that you're known for that friends always, you can share with your friends and family that we should share before we take off? - I can talk about two things. One on the flight side. So I think with flights, it's interesting. COVID has changed airline ticket bookings in the sense that you have a lot more flexibility with ticket changes and cancellations.

And that provides an opportunity to do something similar to what AutoSlash does in terms of price tracking. Google flights is a great tool for tracking your flight pricing. If the price of your flight drops, you can often rebook it and get a credit. JetBlue, Southwest, United, you can take those funds and put them into a travel bank type of situation where you can use them for future flights.

If it's within 24 hours and the price drops, you can just cancel it for free and rebook if it's a flight reservation in the US. Google flights lets you track flight prices on a specific day. You can even go down to a specific flight and a specific airline. So it's a pretty easy way.

Once you book your flight, just go to Google flights and track that. You know, it's an opportunity to potentially save there. So that's one little flight hack that I like. And then on the car rental side, one thing we've been noticing recently is that the car rental companies are requiring minimum rental lengths.

It may be that you go and try to reserve a reservation and you put in a three-day rental request and no availability comes back. And that's because with the limited inventory available right now, the car rental companies in many cases don't want to rent cars for shorter periods of time.

So there may be, for example, a five-day minimum required in order to rent. But if you go to a site like carrentals.com or Expedia, you would never know that. You would just go put in your request. They would say, "Sorry, nothing's found." And you're kind of left to wonder why, you know, there are no cars in Atlanta for, you know, over the coming weekend.

AutoSlush is a little bit different. What we do is we will take your request. If we find no inventory, we will try various tactics in order to try to make availability appear. And one of the things that we had to start doing during COVID is we realized that if we extend the rental by anywhere from a few hours to a few days, that we can make availability appear almost out of thin air.

So if you come in and request a quote from AutoSlush for a three-day rental in, let's say, the Atlanta airport over the weekend, we'll come back to you and say, "Hey, we couldn't find any availability for three days, but we found availability for a five-day rental. So we extended your return time by two days.

Oh, but great news. You can still return it at your originally intended time. And the likelihood is that the car rental company will refund you for the unused days." So it's a great way of gaming the system. If you can't find availability, you can do this yourself. You don't need to use AutoSlush.

Go and just try to add a few days onto the rental until you see the inventory start showing up. And then again, like I said, just return it when you originally planned to. And nine times out of 10, you're gonna get back money for the unused portion of the rentals.

It's a great hack to use. - That brings up one last question. Let's say you make a reservation. You've got this great rate, and you need to come in a day early or leave a day late. Is that something, can you change rental car reservations without having to go back and rebook them and take advantage of the rate you booked?

Or how does that work? - You cannot change a reservation without having it repriced to current rental rates. In some cases, that may be the same. It may be better. It may be much worse. We recommend coming to AutoSlush and requesting a new quote because we'll rerun all those numbers with all the current discounts.

That said, if you're initially booked for let's say a 7 p.m. pickup and you're now changed your flight, you're arriving at noon, no problem at all. As long as it's the same day, you can go and you can pick up as early as you want. If you're trying to pick up the previous day, that's more problematic.

You're probably gonna have an issue and you probably need to rebook the rental. Returning late is no problem at all. You can generally just go and return anytime you want. Obviously, you should call the rental car company if it's more than 24 hours past the time that you're scheduled to return.

But the rental car company oftentimes will be willing to extend the rental. If it's less than one day that you're extending, you can usually just return and the rental car company will adjust the price automatically. - This has been fantastic. Thank you so much. So many good deals. I hope everybody saves money on rental cars, especially over the coming summer where I know they're pretty expensive.

Thanks so much for being here. - It's been a pleasure, Chris. Thanks for having me. (upbeat music) - I really hope you enjoyed this episode. And if so, then you can be thankful for your fellow listener, Josh, who suggested I invite Jonathan on the show. So thank you so much, Josh.

This episode was fantastic. Also, if you missed it last week, All The Hacks is up for the People's Choice Podcast Awards. And I think I have a shot of winning with your help. This site is a bit of a pain, but all you have to do is create an account and you can quickly vote after that.

So if you wanna support me in the show, please go to allthehacks.com/vote and you can vote for All The Hacks in the People's Choice Award and the Education category. As silly as it may sound, being an award-winning podcast really helps with recruiting the best guests for the show. So thank you so much in advance for your help.

Finally, if you have feedback, questions, or just wanna say hi, I'm Chris@allthehacks.com, or you can DM me on Instagram or Twitter, and I'll see you next week. you