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Unlike hotel and airfare rates, car rental prices vary wildly across different websites. Often the best rates are less than half of what you you can find on a site like Expedia or Travelocity. Unfortunately, there isn’t a car rental booking site that is right for every person, and every rental—but Autoslash comes close.

The Autoslash website is the easiest way to get a great rate on your car rentals. And after you make your reservation, Autoslash will continue to try to get you an even better rate.

If you are willing to spend the extra effort, you can sometimes find a better car rental rate on a different site, especially if you are willing to use one of the smaller rental car companies. But, if you want to keep things simple, there is no easier and more reliable way to get a good rate than Autoslash.

Using Autoslash

Most online travel sites only search the regular rates, not the special discounted rates that are widely available for car rentals.

• Autoslash searches a wide variety of discount and coupon codes, across a number of sites, to try to find the lowest rate. These discounted rates are typically considerably cheaper than the rates that show up on online travel sites or car rental websites. When you initiate your search, you can check all the discount programs that you are entitled to access from Autoslash's list.
• Using Autoslash is a bit "weird". Unlike most other websites, Autoslash doesn't show you your rates right away. Instead, you fill out your rental information, and they will send you an email a few minutes later. You need to click on a link in the email to visit the webpage that shows the actual rates (for the specific car size you asked for) from a number of different rental car companies.

If you want to make a reservation, you can book via Priceline. This may be confusing, because while you make your reservation with Priceline, the rates are the ones that Autoslash found, not the normal rates you would find if you went directly to the Priceline website. Rest assured that Autoslash isn't just a front-end to Priceline. They simply have a deal with Priceline that lets them leverage Priceline's backend to handle the actual reservation with the rate code that Autoslash uncovered. Also, while it says "Pay at Counter" that usually translates to paying when you drop off your car, like a normal car rental reservation.

In many cases, you'll also have the option of booking an even cheaper rate directly through Autoslash. For these "Pay Now" rates, you'll need to pay in full when you make the reservation, but you can cancel or change the reservation up to 48 hours before pick-up. This is much better than a typical non-refundable rate. However, wit "Pay Now" reservations, you won't be able to add your frequent renter number to the reservation ahead of time. You can add it at the counter when you arrive, or with National at the exit gate after you choose your car from the Emerald Aisle. But, this is more inconvenient than with the regular reservation.

• Autoslash often automatically includes a coupon code in your reservation. That typically means that you won’t be able to add an additional coupon after you book.
• In most cases, Autoslash winds up finding the cheapest rates for most of our rentals, but don't count on it always being lower than what you can find elsewhere, even for sites that it purports to search. If you are going to search only one site, make it Autoslash. But, if you are willing to spend more time and effort, it can be worthwhile searching additional sites.
• Regardless of how you book, Autoslash will keep trying to get you a lower rate. If so, you'll get a notification to re-book your reservation at the lower rate. Even if you wind up making your initial reservation elsewhere, you can enter confirmation number into Autoslash to have them track your rental rates.

Searching some additional sites

While Autoslash is the single best tool for car rentals, it can be worthwhile to check other some other sites as well.

• Use a large travel site to check the prices at smaller car rental companies. The very best rental rates are likely to be from much smaller companies like E-Z Car Rentals or Ace Rent a Car, not from Avis, Hertz, and National, or even their smaller brethren, like Alamo or Thrifty. The best way to find these rates is to search an online travel site like Expedia or [//www.kayak.com/cars Kayak.com. Autoslash focuses primarily on the larger companies.

It doesn’t make much difference which one you use. We compared a handful of sites like Expedia, Travelocity, carrentals.com, and rentalcars.com, and in almost all cases, they returned essentially the same prices. Perhaps that comes as no surprise, as Expedia owns many of them.

• If you have access to a good corporate or organizational discount code, it can often provide the best rates with certain car rental companies. For example, one of us used to work at Microsoft, and their rates with Avis and National were often fantastic, especially for domestic rentals. However, their rate with Hertz was often higher than the non-discounted prices. Many discount codes available to employees of smaller companies are not as good. If your organization allows you to use their car rental rates with your personal rentals, it is worthwhile to check them—either through your organization’s travel portal, or by entering an applicable rate code into each rental company’s website. Use Corporate Car Rental Discounts (If You Can).
• On average, Costco offers the best generally available discounts and isn't always effectively searched by Autoslash. If you are a Costco member, their website sometimes displays lower rates than what shows up on Autoslash, even if you let Autoslash know that you are a Costco member. Their rates are generally better than what you can get with AAA, AARP, or other widely-available discounts codes. And they let you easily search Alamo, Avis, Budget, and Enterprise using a single search.  

Additional money saving tips

• (In most cases) turn down the insurance options. If you have auto insurance, are using a credit card, and are renting in the United States, Canada, or Europe, you are almost certainly covered by your existing insurance. Ignore the sales pitch and turn down all the extra insurance options. However, if you don’t have regular auto insurance, or you are travelling outside of these areas, you might need to get liability coverage from the car rental company. Guide to Car Rental Insurance.
• Turn down the prepaid tank of gas. Car rental companies typically offer to let you prepay for gas at competitive prices, so that you don’t have to swing by a gas station before you return your car. This is almost always a bad deal. They charge you for the entire tank, regardless of how much gas is in the tank when you return the car. If you come back with a half tank, you're effectively paying double the per-gallon-rate. The only way a prepaid tank is affordable, is if you bring the car back nearly empty—but that's stressful and not always possible. On a short rental, consider having the car rental company fill the car up for you and just pay the high per-gallon cost. On a longer rental, fill it up yourself.
• You can often avoid paying an additional driver fee. Most car rental companies will allow you to add your spouse or domestic partner as an additional driver, at no additional charge, at least for members of their loyalty programs. Some will even let you add any other person as a free additional driver. For details see:

Avoid Paying Additional Driver Fees on Car Rentals

More advanced car rental strategies

If you are going to take one step towards lower car rental rates, start using Autoslash. If you are interested in doing more, check out some of our additional strategies.

Credit Cards That Provide “Primary” Rental Car Coverage

Always Use a Car Rental Coupon to Get an Additional Discount on Your Reservation

Use Corporate Car Rental Discounts (If You Can)

Going Blind—Getting a Better Car Rental Rate with Priceline or Hotwire

Easy Ways to Earn Free Car Rentals

Eliminate Expensive Taxes and Fees by Renting or Swapping Your Car at Non-Airport Locations

Avoid Paying Outrageous Car Rental Toll Surcharges

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