Car Hire in August - What have you paid?

[Portugal1000]

Have booked my flights now, 11th August to 1st September. Looking for a 4x4 as usual. Last year paid £435 with usrentacar for 23 nights. Best price I see with them now is £535, bit cheaper if you go offsite with shuttle bus, really cant be bothered with that.
Anyone seen any better?
Thanks

 

[BudgieMama]

Watching this, as we're thinking about hiring a car next time, so I'd be interested to see what people have paid

 

[irenep]

We have an intermediate SUV for 15 nights at £326.
Booked using autoeurope (Budget) in November - still hoping for a sale somewhere to get it cheaper.

 

[lennymore]

We're looking also - for 21 days; normally we go in May for 2 weeks and get it for about £200 to £250 so I'm preparing myself for a hike...!

 

[Wills Mom]

Following! We have yet to book our car for August. 15 nights and cheapest I can find is £343 (BA car hire through Executive Club with Alamo. After an incident with Budget 2 years ago I won't use them again)

 

[strawberry blonde]

Following too. We go 29 April for 16 nights.

Usually use Alamo/Brits but haven't been for 2 years and prices have shot up with all car hire.

 

[wayneg]

I have 2 rentals to sort this year. First in Atlanta March into April 15 nights. I almost booked a 7 seater SUV with Hertz last week for £450 after cashback, decided to wait and see if anything better came along, big mistake, end of last week it jumped to almost £700 so I have reserved a standard SUV at £380 with Alamo.co.uk
For some strange reason it was £100 cheaper than going with the Brits deal, plus they are offering free additional driver just now, same as the Brits deal. I can cancel upto 7 days before if the Hertz price drops again.

Our other is for August, there are reasonable prices around for upto Full size cars but once you go up to SUV's & vans the prices rocket, I would prefer a SUV but I am considering reserving a full size to lock in with the price, I can always cancel if anything better pops up.

All prices quoted are after cashback with Quidco.

 

[wayneg]

Following! We have yet to book our car for August. 15 nights and cheapest I can find is £343 (BA car hire through Executive Club with Alamo. After an incident with Budget 2 years ago I won't use them again)

Budget are the only company I avoid, they used to offer free upgrades but all 3 I rented with them I had to fight to get the upgrade, even then their cars were nowhere near as good as other rental companies. Saying that its a few years since I used them so no idea what they are like now.

 

[DISWolves]

Budget are the only company I avoid, they used to offer free upgrades but all 3 I rented with them I had to fight to get the upgrade, even then their cars were nowhere near as good as other rental companies. Saying that its a few years since I used them so no idea what they are like now.

I used Budget from Miami in 2013 and after spending 3 hours from landing, to get out I was ready to do battle. I must say that they car we had, Chevvy Equinox was one of the best to date, with no hard sell. Last year from MCO, Dollar car was a lot higher mileage and showed a lot of wear. I guess it's the luck of the draw.
I'm also on the look out for SUV in August, but as you say, the prices are sky high right now.

 

[irenep]

Oh dear, you guys are getting me worried about our Budget booking now.
It's been a few years since I used Budget at MCO but we rented with them twice last year in the US without problems.
Still hoping there will be a better deal at some point but I hope it will be okay if not.

 

[wayneg]

Oh dear, you guys are getting me worried about our Budget booking now.
It's been a few years since I used Budget at MCO but we rented with them twice last year in the US without problems.
Still hoping there will be a better deal at some point but I hope it will be okay if not.

I am sure it will be fine, it must be 5 years since I used them so my experience is nothing to go on.

I used to avoid Alamo, I had a bad rental with them Xmas 2000, took me 10 years to use them again, tried them again in 2010 and rented with them numerous times since without a problem.

 

[wilma-bride]

Are there any discounts available for car hire at the moment? We are looking for a car for 4 days, picking up at san Diego and dropping off at LAX. We're looking at about £120 Presumably there is a one-way fee in there somewhere but,e ven so, it's pretty steep!

 

[wayneg]

Are there any discounts available for car hire at the moment? We are looking for a car for 4 days, picking up at san Diego and dropping off at LAX. We're looking at about £120 Presumably there is a one-way fee in there somewhere but,e ven so, it's pretty steep!

What size car? £120 is about the going rate for 4 days SUV (cheapest I just saw was £105). Are you collecting from SD airport? there should be no one way fee between airport locations within Cali.

Free of Charge One Ways*

· All airport locations within and between the states of Arizona, California and Nevada

· Any rental WITHIN the states of Florida or California

· Las Vegas(airport) to San Francisco (city locations)

· Phoenix(airport) to San Francisco (city locations)

· San Francisco (city locations) to Phoenix(airport)

 

[DLPDreams]

Virgin were the cheapest when we looked - beat Alamo direct, Brits, Hertz and US rent a car - didn't bother trying Budget. We want to collect from DCC so it does narrow choice a bit. We are only hiring for 4 days and had to have a 7 seater - so again, narrows it down. Virgin had a similar offer on to Wayne states - free additional driver, which if you need it (we will), is worth it. But think it ended 31/1. We got our 7 seater van with gold +, inc sat nav for significantly less than the others I mentioned. I wasn't going to bother going for gold + but when it was cheaper than the others offering silver (or even basic in some cases), I decided to go for it!

It's like everything when booking DIY - it's just a case of searching around - bit of a pain but if it saves the pennies!

 

[strawberry blonde]

Cheapest I found was Netflights yesterday plus money back on Topcashback.

 

[mufasa1982]

We booked 20 days in August for £270 through netflights, was about £90 cheaper than direct with Alamo.

There are only 3 of us though so we have got the smallest car available

 

[jothp]

Hi, I've just got a quote from alamo brits for a ford fusion or similar - £341 for 18 nights in August - does this seem reasonable? I would ideally like something bigger because there will be 5 of us plus luggage but the price for anything bigger is more than double and I'm struggling to justify that when we would only really need the extra space to get to universal on the day we arrive and to transfer to disney. Rather than paying that much for the car I was thinking we would be better off putting the luggage in the car and the rest of us taking a taxi to universal. To get from universal to disney we would probably just do 2 trips. What do you think?

 

[DLPDreams]

Hi, I've just got a quote from alamo brits for a ford fusion or similar - £341 for 18 nights in August - does this seem reasonable? I would ideally like something bigger because there will be 5 of us plus luggage but the price for anything bigger is more than double and I'm struggling to justify that when we would only really need the extra space to get to universal on the day we arrive and to transfer to disney. Rather than paying that much for the car I was thinking we would be better off putting the luggage in the car and the rest of us taking a taxi to universal. To get from universal to disney we would probably just do 2 trips. What do you think?

Prices for bigger cars can be silly. We need a 7 seater as there are 6 of us. We have decided not to have a car for the whole duration partly owing to cost, but also because I don't think we'll need it all the time (I know you've read my thread about getting around from OKW!). We may feel differently after doing Disney buses for a while, but we want to give it a go.

DH is going to be the main driver and as we arrive quite late, he doesn't want to drive from the airport - first time in Orlando, so fair enough. Plus as well, we weighed up the parking charge for the 3 (or 4) days we are there and looked at cost of vehicles and the fact it would sit there and have decided against getting one for that part of our trip. We will take taxi to US from SFB and then from US to WDW and collect our car a few days later. We are prebooking (still to do) a taxi with a grocery stop included so that we can pick up a few bits at a Publix or wherever.

I am not sure hiring a car, paying parking at US (unless you plan on using the car at US - not sure how long you are staying?) and also taking a taxi for some of you, is value efficient tbh. But you could do the maths to work it out. It wasn't for us due to the 7 seater situation!

 

[wayneg]

Hi, I've just got a quote from alamo brits for a ford fusion or similar - £341 for 18 nights in August - does this seem reasonable? I would ideally like something bigger because there will be 5 of us plus luggage but the price for anything bigger is more than double and I'm struggling to justify that when we would only really need the extra space to get to universal on the day we arrive and to transfer to disney. Rather than paying that much for the car I was thinking we would be better off putting the luggage in the car and the rest of us taking a taxi to universal. To get from universal to disney we would probably just do 2 trips. What do you think?

Just noticed Sixt are doing some better prices for SUV's on your dates (11th-29th Aug if I am correct) Intermediate SUV £377 less 10% Quidco = £339, standard SUV £420 less 10% = £378. Sixt are offsite at MCO, shuttle service.

 

[jothp]

DLP dreams - it only works out about £30 more to have the car while we are at universal too but it means we don't have to worry about fitting in time to pick it up once we get to disney. Still not sure what we are going to do yet though.

Thanks Wayne - dates were very close - 12th - 30th. Those deals do look good. Is it a big inconvenience to take the shuttle offsite?