I took a combo Amtrak/rental car trip last week (Spokane to East Glacier Park round trip via Amtrak and rental car at East Glacier so I could spend 3 or 4 days exploring Montana) and it was $130/day. Fortunately that was with unlimited mileage; I put about 1600 miles on the rental car. At what would have been 25 cents/mile, that would have been a huge chunk of change.Is anyone else noticing that car rental rates are unusually high this summer... whether it's a one way rental or returning to same location, I'm getting $100 a day for the smallest vehicle.
Yes, there's not a train option to consider.
I'm not staying home, but it's another road trip year for us. Fortunately I got all the hotel reservations lined up before the prices started spiking. (Though hotels in the northeast are disgustingly expensive every summer, I actually snagged a couple with decent prices.) And we're spending the week up in the cabin in Maine, which doesn't cost us anything.
Some posters on FlyerTalk have complained that rental agencies are not honoring reservations, but telling customers the price has gone up when the customer arrives to rent the car.
I think someone did this (and got some publicity for it) in the UK a few years back, when train tickets there got stupidly expensive. The biggest issue is dealing with registering it.Sounds to me, like it might be more cost-effective to just buy (and then resell), an old "beater" to get around in, for extended stays...
But then, the prices of those have also risen dramatically, of late.....
I sense this is going to end in a class-action suit or two (e.g. rich lawyers and probably vouchers for the affected folks). This is a lousy position for folks to be in on the receiving end, but it reeks of fraud.
My guess is that it's more that the computer's demand model got a little bit froggy trying to milk the situation and they ended up with more availability. Don't forget that Amtrak's roomettes used to come down close to the last minute; with prices in the stratosphere I wouldn't be surprised if rental car companies are doing some of this (raising the price in advance, in an attempt to ration demand, and then cutting the price if the cars don't move at the jacked-up rates).
( I just booked AUS-SFO for $159 and AUS-CHI for $109 on their 50% off Deal/ RTs!!!
)$100+ per day for a subcompact is the going rate in my experience, and that assumes they actually have a car ready when you show up. Reports of dirty interiors, delayed maintenance, and empty lots are rather common at the moment. You'd think at least one chain would have been in better shape but last I checked Avis owned Budget, Hertz owned Dollar and Thrifty, Enterprise owned Alamo and National, and the others had a distinctly gray market feel to them.
I've seen this done on television shows like Top Gear but I'm unenthusiastic about spending my vacation hours looking for a used car of unknown dependability and getting it inspected, registered, insured, plated, and stickered in my name. Since I don't have a staff of fixers it seems like an excessive level of risk to me.
Too bad Amtrak didn't have any time to rehab,fix Rail Cars during the past year since Rail Travel was @ record levels and they ran the Trains day and Night Non-Stop, No wait-----
Alpine,TX ( Sunset Ltd)Mom and Pop Rentals are Beaters, but they run and the Price is Right!
And if it was any dark color or plain white, a lot of people slowed down when they saw you coming.
If you're a Costco member, check their rates. For a couple of the major rental companies they were better than the companies themselves were offering (Enterprise and Avis IIRC). I was able to leverage a preferred rate and discount code with Hertz for a slight saving over all of them, but still paying over $400 for a 3-day rental in September.
That's a really good rate! Minivans showed in a couple of my recent searches at $400 a day or more (not that I needed one). Obviously there's a huge regional disparity.
