Category Archives: Rental Cars

Cheap Car Rentals: Part 10 – Why Everyone Should Sign-Up For Frequent Car Rental Programs

Posted on June 19, 2013 by | 3 Comments

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Enrolling in car rental frequent renter programs (such as Avis Preferred or Budget FastBreak) is quick, free, and easy.

The biggest benefit of these free programs is skipping the long line at the rental counter at the airport and going straight to your car.

You can also earn free rental credits and/or miles.  Award Wallet is a great tool which will store your rental car program information!

Frequent Rental Programs-003

Skip The Lines For Free At Airports When You Enroll In Frequent Car Rental Programs


Continue reading →

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Posted in Alamo, Avis, Budget, Enterprise, National, Rental Cars

Cheap Car Rentals: Part 9 – American Airlines Car Rentals

Posted on June 5, 2013 by | 13 Comments

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You can book car rentals with American Airlines miles. You don’t have to pay the full amount using miles, but can combine cash and miles for most of the rental.

Use American Airlines Miles for Car Rentals

Use American Airlines Miles for Car Rentals

Cheap Car Rentals Series: Continue reading →

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Posted in American Airlines, Rental Cars

Cheap Car Rentals – Let AutoSlash Do The Work

Posted on May 14, 2013 by | 18 Comments

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Autoslash used to be one of the best ways to save money on a car rental.

Cheap Car Rentals Series:

The way it worked is that you would first make a refundable rental car reservation at Hertz, or Avis etc.  You would then have Autoslash track the price of the rental (in case it decreased) by entering the confirmation number in Autoslash.

Let Autoslash Do The Work

Autoslash would then track the rental and send you an email every time the price decreased and give you the option to rebook.  You could also book directly through Autoslash and have Autoslash automatically rebook you at a lower price if the rates went down. Continue reading →

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Posted in Rental Cars

News You Can Use – 10,000 Club Carlson Points & More…

Posted on May 14, 2013 by | 5 Comments

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1.  Earn 10,000 Club Carlson Per Two-Night Reservation

Loyalty Lobby reports that Club Carlson has a 10,000 points bonus for each stay of 2 or more consecutive nights, from May 13, 2013 to July 21, 2013.  Registration is required before the stay, and can be done here.

Club Carlson 10,000 Points Promotion

Club Carlson Two Nights 10,000 Points Promotion

Per the Terms and Conditions, the rate booked must be eligible for earning points, so reservations made through third-party sites like Priceline or Orbitz may not be eligible.

Club Carlson is the hotel loyalty program for Country Inns and Suites, Radisson, Radisson Blu, Park Inn by Radisson,  and Park Plaza, so points you earn can be redeemed at any of these hotels.

2.  Rental Car Promotions

Deals We Like highlights a boatload carload of current rental promotions for Avis, Budget, Enterprise, and Hertz. Continue reading →

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Posted in American Express, Avis, British Airways, Budget, Credit Cards, Enterprise, Rental Cars, Starwood (SPG)

Cheap Car Rentals – 5 Ways to Add an Additional Driver for Free

Posted on April 2, 2013 by | 21 Comments

[Disclaimer:  Rental car terms and conditions and state law changes constantly.  Please do your OWN research on additional driver fees before renting a car.]

Rental car companies such as Budget, Avis & Enterprise allow you to add a spouse or domestic partner for free when you rent in the US.  Other rental car companies such as Thrifty, Dollar, National, Hertz and Alamo charge you to add an additional driver.

However, you can avoid the fee at Alamo, Hertz, & National by enrolling in their frequent rental programs and then booking a car rental which has your frequent rental number.

You Have to Wade Through a Lot of Fine Print to add an Additional Driver for Free!

You Have to Wade Through a Lot of Fine Print to add an Additional Driver for Free!

Continue reading →

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Posted in Rental Cars

Avis Cancels Cheap Weekend Reservations

Posted on March 28, 2013 by | 24 Comments

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Avis has cancelled reservations made with the AVIS free weekend deal.  Thanks to jsafford for alerting me!

I logged into my Avis account and found all my upcoming reservations were cancelled.  Here’s the email which I got from AVIS.

Avis Cancels Reservations

Avis Cancels Reservations

Prepaid reservations are being refunded without any cancellation fees. Continue reading →

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Posted in Avis

~$3+ Avis Weekend Car Rental Until June 30, 2013 (Won’t Last!) [Expired]

Posted on March 26, 2013 by | 101 Comments

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Update:  Avis has cancelled all reservations made with this coupon code.  Please check your reservations!

~$3+ Avis Weekend Car Rental

Mr. Pickles shares his experience using AVIS discount code TUEA002 to get a free car weekend rental.  You won’t always get the rental for $0, but ~$4+ for 2 weekend days is good enough for me!

It also could help to have a back-up plan just in case the rental is not honored by Avis.  Mr. Pickles had no issue with his rental, but things could change.

This coupon isn’t valid in Alaska, the New York Metro area, Canada, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.  It also isn’t valid for rentals after June 30, 2013.  However, I suspect the coupon will expire a lot sooner than June 30!

You can even enter your airline frequent flyer information to earn miles!  I entered my Southwest number for 600 points.

Step 1 – Go To Avis.com

Go to Avis.com and enter “TUEA002” in the “Coupon Code” field.

Free Avis Weekend Rental 3

Enter Coupon Code

Step 2 – Select Your Car Continue reading →

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Posted in Avis

Cheap Car Rentals: National Car Rental’s “Last Minute Specials”

Posted on February 18, 2013 by | 8 Comments

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National Car Rental has last minute specials on their website.

National Last Minute Specials -3

Last Minute Specials

In my experience, these aren’t usually lower than elsewhere (especially compared to the Chase Ultimate Rewards Mall or the Capital One travel portal), but it could save money sometimes – especially for weekend rentals (Thursday through Monday). Continue reading →

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Posted in National

Cheap Car Rentals: Southwest Airlines’ Car Rentals

Posted on February 4, 2013 by | 15 Comments

Readers have commented on previous posts in the cheap car rentals series asking why I didn’t mention Kayak or CarRentals.com

Cheap Car Rentals Series:

Southwest Airlines’ Car Rentals

I didn’t include those sites, because Kayak is confusing and sneakily includes Hotwire & car rental ads in the search results.  Hotwire reservations are non-cancellable whereas reservations via the Southwest website can be cancelled and there is no penalty for not picking up the car.

In my experience, Southwest usually returns prices which are comparable to CarRentals.com & Kayak and sometimes cheaper since you earn Southwest points for car rentals when booking a car rental with preferred rental car partners.

Southwest also has discount codes with certain rental car companies which sometimes leads to cheaper rates.  You can find the individual discount codes on this page and can enter them in the main search box here so that you can see all the results at once.

So I prefer booking a car rental on either the Costco Travel website or on the Southwest website since I know that I have a confirmed reservation which I can always cancel for no penalty in case I find a better deal elsewhere! Continue reading →

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Posted in Rental Cars, Southwest

Cheap Car Rentals: Saving Money With the Capital One Travel Portal

Posted on January 29, 2013 by | 12 Comments

[Disclosure:  Emily and I get a referral for the link to creditcards.com in this post.  As always, thanks for using our links!]

Capital One also has a travel portal as part of their No Hassle Rewards portal, similar to Chase Ultimate Rewards & Citi Thank You Points, where you can book cheap car rentals.

Cheap Car Rentals Series:

capital one travel portal

I first read about cheap car rentals via Capital One on Rapid Travel Chai.  In my experience, rentals weren’t always cheaper on the Capital One travel portal, but they were sometimes cheaper than the Chase Ultimate Rewards and Citi Thank You portals.

The BIG advantage of the Capital One No Hassle Rewards travel portal is that you can book one-way car rentals (where you rent the car in one city, but drop it off in another city) and pick-ups at non-airport locations.  You can’t book these type of rentals with Chase Ultimate Rewards and Citi Thank You points. Continue reading →

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Posted in Capital One, Capital One Travel Portal