Sharp Practices At The Car Rental Counter

My husband and I were told today at an Avis car rental counter in the Norfolk, Va., airport that we could pay in advance to have the tank refilled on return of the vehicle at the rate of $2.60 a gallon, the same as we’d pay at a gas station.

It sounded convenient, but the offer was both misleading and untrue.

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Rental Car Taxes Proliferating

New taxes on car rentals are popping up all over, according to USA Today, which cites movements to add or increase taxes in Florida, Maine, New Jersey, Michigan and Wisconsin.

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State And Local Governments Put Tax Squeeze On Travelers

There’s an excellent story in USA Today running down several cases in which local and state governments have raised taxes on travelers to make up budget shortfalls.

Hawaii and Las Vegas have both raised hotel tax rates, despite dreadfully low occupancy rates. And car rental taxes have gone up considerably in some places, most notably in in Milwaukee.

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Car Rental Rates Way Up

I wasn’t imagining it. Car rental rates are way up, The New York Times’ Practical Traveler reports.

Weekly airport rental rates for a compact car were up 73 percent this May over the previous May and 65 percent in mid-June from a year earlier.

The reason is basic supply and demand. Although demand for car rentals is down — by roughly 15 percent, according to [the president of the Abrams Consulting Group, Neil] Abrams — rental agencies have cut their fleets by even more, essentially creating their own shortage and jacking up prices.

Last month I complained about high rental car rates and several people wrote to tell me about the great deals they got. Now I don’t feel quite as stupid, although I’m clearly not as smart as my readers.

The Times column has some advice on getting lower rates.

I’ll Remember This Alamo

When I picked up a Jeep I rented from Alamo for a week on Kauai, I got such an apocalyptic hard sell for the collision-damage waiver that I’ll hesitate to rent from Alamo again.

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Car Rental Bargains Are Hard To Come By

The crummy economy and now swine flu are creating unbelievable deals on air fares, cruises and hotels. So what about rental cars?

Not so much.

I’m finding car rental rates higher than ever, with new fees and taxes piled on top. In some cases, it’s difficult to find a car at all.

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Rental Car Deals Offered On One-Way Trips From Florida

It’s that time of year again. Some rental car companies are doing their annual Florida drive outs, offering low rates to drivers willing to take a one-way trip out of Florida.

Drivers snag a bargain and the companies redistribute their fleets northward for the summer.

Not all the rental companies are offering drive out deals, and I don’t think it’s my imagination that these rates seem harder to book online than in recent years. In noodling around with it, I was able to get special rates into Connecticut only on the Alamo and National sites.

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Car Rental Companies Chase Zipcar

Car rental companies have been cratering lately. But one upstart company has come forward with a completely new business model and is expanding rapidly.

So it’s no wonder that Hertz looked at Zipcar and quickly moved from “why didn’t we think of that” to “let’s give that a shot.” Enter Connect By Hertz, a car-sharing program clearly modeled on Zipcar.

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Rental Car Customers Get Unwanted ‘Upgrades’

Feeling stuck with that SUV or luxury sedan in the driveway? Pity the car rental companies, which own many thousands of them.

Or pity their poor customers, who keep getting stuck with those gas-guzzlers when they try to rent smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.

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An End To Rental Car Gas Rip-Offs?

A couple of months ago, owing to a bad sense of direction and some confusion over the Turkish word for airport, my sister and I ended up returning a rental car at the airport in Kayseri, Turkey, with half a tank of diesel and only a few minutes to spare before our flight.

Lucky for us, the local Europcar reps met us at the airport, quickly calculated the cost of the diesel fuel and accepted cash. We paid something reasonably like the going rate for diesel and made our flight.

This is not what has been happening in the United States, where taking shameful advantage of lost, confused and disorganized travelers who don’t fill the tank is a proud tradition among rental car companies. Except that maybe a few chinks have appeared in that rip-off wall.

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