Underage Drivers??

[kayladan04]

Hi, We are going for a short trip in Feb. We will need a car the 18- 21 returning it at 4:30 am. I would like to rent it at Disney and return it to the airport. The cheapest I have found was Alamo at $90 but we are also under 25. We are married and my husband is a city firefighter. I thought I read somewhere that if you join a rental car's club or are a gov't employee the underage fee would be dropped. Does anyone know?

 

[safetymom]

You would have to check with each rental agency. Each company has their own policies.

 

[CarolA]

Most of the rental agencies won't drop it, even if you join thier program. As Safetymom said you would need to contact them on the goverment employee issue.

 

[2infinityandbeyond]

My sister is under 25 and she just found out the hard way that Budget will no longer rent to anyone under 25. She booked the car online (which she had done many times in the past) and when she arrived at her destination, the Budget person informed her of the change in their policy. There was no info posted on their website about the change in policy.

 

[NotUrsula]

The thing to do is to see if your employer or your husband's has a business account with a particular rental car company. Usually those accounts are set up so that the underage renter charge does not apply.

Even if you don't normally travel for business, many employers will let you identify yourself as part of the account anyway as long as you have a clean driving record; you would just have to pay whatever the negotiated business rate is (each account has a group ID code for ressies), and pay it out of pocket. Many times, the negotiated rate is a daily business rate that will not be as cheap as a leisure rate you can get yourself, but it will still usually work out to be cheaper than paying that underage surcharge.

 

[snoopy5386]

if none of this other stuff works out for you, i have found that enterprise has the cheapest underage driver fee - 10 bucks a day

 

[CarolA]

Don't assume that the company deals will get you out of the underage fee. Our company has one with Hertz and we pay the underage fee on the kids who rent!

 

[NotUrsula]

Yes, it does depend on the terms of the contract, but your HR manager should be able to tell you when you ask about using the account.

The company I work for also has a contract with Hertz, but ours DOES waive the underage fee. This is because we have a lot of software trainers who are straight out of college, and most of them are women under 25. These are folks who are on the road 9 days out of 10, and they very seldom wish to keep doing that schedule much past their mid-20's.

 

[kayladan04]

Thanks everyone for your tips! I've been holding off on the car because we weren't sure whether we wanted to spend the $$ . I got on tonight and almost everyone is sold out so it looks like we are going with enterprise which is only $12 a day for underage so it all worked out!! Thanks so much!