need help with SoCal rental car. Fox or Firefly?

[nkereina]

Haven't rented a car in 15+ years and last time we did, it was a pretty simple reservation.

We'll be traveling around Southern California in May. We'd like a compact or mid-size to be picked up on a Friday at the San Diego airport, returning a week later on Saturday at LAX. Prices are currently showing between $500-$700 for the duration. More than I anticipated. Any tips or places I should check for a better deal? I've checked Enterprise with my corportate discount and Orbitz but I'm seeing the same prices.

On another note, both Fox Rental Car and Firefly are showing around $200-$300 for the duration. Any experiences with either? I've not heard of them before and they get mostly bad reviews online, which is telling. Just wondering how they can be so much cheaper....

Thanks all!

 

[bcla]

The rumor about the super low-cost rental agencies is that they pressure their employees to find damage (and possibly charge for preexisting damage), and that many are either poorly trained or don't really care about customer service. Firefly gets a lot of disgruntled renters claiming that they were double-charged, overcharged, or asked to pay for damage that was already there. Even BBB gives them a C+ rating, and that's highly unusual since most businesses have an A rating.

http://www.bbb.org/denver/business-...car-rental-in-denver-co-90162298#reasonrating

The names that I've heard to avoid are ones like Fox, Payless, Advantage, E-Z, and Firefly. A lot of them save money by being offsite rather than in a consolidated rental facility that's convenient. I recently rented a car at an airport (rates were much cheaper than downtown where we were staying), and none of these lower-priced rentals were at the airport. They had shuttle buses to off-site locations.

We paid $14 + tax/fees for a single day around Labor Day weekend. It was also very convenient because our hotel had a free airport shuttle bus. When I asked the driver if it was OK to use the shuttle to facilitate renting a car, he said that a lot of his passengers do just that.

Your best bet is to keep on looking. Also - don't worry about the reservation since you can cancel at any time and not even show up if you don't feel like renting. That is, if you don't prepay with a credit card. I usually cancel when I book several rentals for a better price, but last time we got in late and couldn't cancel via Priceline or the rental agency. The rental agency said I had to cancel through Priceline, while Priceline said that it was too late to cancel and not worry about it since there was no penalty if I didn't come in. I also managed the get the better rate for a single day.

I'd also note that typically Budget and Avis are the same company with the same rental fleet. Avis bought them out but for some reason kept the name. For our last rental, the Budget and Avis counters were next to each other. There wasn't anyone at the Budget desk, so when the one Avis employee was done with a rental, she logged right into the Budget terminal. Also - when I picked up the Budget and Avis areas were merged as one, with a single sign.

 

[bcla]

Also - the drop off fee is going to cost you a bunch, except for some of the low-price rentals. I priced Fri, May 8 to Sat, May 16 and got $258 total from Dollar for a midsize SAN-SAN, but $536 for a midsize SAN-LAX. I didn't see a specific drop-off fee; they simply rolled the drop-off into the rate.

One of the tricks is to rent from an off-site location where there might be less for a drop-off. A lot of people have noted that Budget in South San Francisco is less than 2 miles from SFO, but that drop-off charges basically disappear compared to picking up at the airport. You could take a cab to the rental agency and then pick up the rest of your group with the rental.

I priced the same for Avis from their off-airport location at downtown San Diego (1670 Kettner Boulevard - location code KS3) and it was $359 total for pickup there and drop-off at LAX. I'm getting less than $15 taxi fare. It's less than 2 miles in a straight line, but vehicle traffic has to go backwards and then loop back towards downtown, because of the roads. Another issue is that the off-airport locations generally don't stay open later than maybe 6 to 7 PM on weekdays. If your flight is coming early you might not have issues, but if it's coming in at night you probably won't be able to rent off-site.

 

[nkereina]

bcla - THANK YOU! Such invaluable info. I appreciate you taking the time to price this out and will likely go with one of the above options, which I hadn't considered. Thanks so much!

 

[bcla]

bcla - THANK YOU! Such invaluable info. I appreciate you taking the time to price this out and will likely go with one of the above options, which I hadn't considered. Thanks so much!

Much appreciated. I only know of this trick (and it's not cheating the system) because similar off-site rentals were brought up on DIS. In particular, I saw questions about why Budget in SSF (less than two miles from SFO) cost way less for a one-way rental than renting at the airport. Some people were getting a $400 weekly rental with dropoff at LAX, while renting at SFO with a dropoff at SFO could be almost $1000.

However, you're going to have to spend extra time and perhaps have people waiting at the airport. If your entire group and all your luggage will fit in a cab, you should be set. The main issue would be a flight delay completely disturbing your schedule. You could make a backup reservation at the airport just in case your flight is delayed beyond an off-airport closing time. I noted that most reservations have no penalty if you don't show up - as long as you're not required to leave a deposit. You could probably cancel the unused reservation.