Car Rental Savings – Hotwire.com

A few weeks ago I reserved a compact, 4-door car with Alamo for six days and was quoted $301 (rental+tax). It was the best rate I could find online. Today on a lark I checked Hotwire.com, a site I never use because while they’ll quote a price, they won’t tell the name of the hotel/airline/or car rental company till after you’ve charged it to your credit card.

For a similar compact, 4-door car for six days Hotwire quoted me $178 (rental+tax). What the Hell, I booked it, then found out that the rental company was Hertz. Jumping over to Hertz.com I found the exact same vehicle renting for $347 (rental+tax).

So Hotwire has won me over, at least when it comes to renting cars at airports. They really don’t have a choice, it’s going to have to be with either Hertz, Alamo, National, Avis, Budget, Enterprise, etc, so there’s a BIG difference between renting a car with Hotline and risking an entire vacation by committing to an unnamed hotel with them.

(Side note…. I always seem to find even better deals once they’re no longer useful to me, and it happened again after I charged the Hotwire rental. Try 4TravelCoupons.com, and you might be able to shave off even more $$$ when renting a car through Hotwire. Turn out I could have saved another $30, which would have made it almost $200 less then Hertz.com was renting the same car for.)