I have been tracking rental car rates for my upcoming Las Vegas trip, May 30 2:30 PM to June 3rd, 10 AM. Here is what I have booked and rebooked at Payless (hope the formatting comes out okay):
date size price
2/26 Economy $122.22
3/4 Compact $117.52
3/5/ Compact $112.82
3/6/ Economy $103.44
3/9 Economy $98.74
3/11 Economy $89.33
3/13 Economy $85.38
Today's rate is $146 for a compact car.
I do a quick check when I'm on line. A couple minutes to check a rate is time well spent. Companies that profess to give you automatic updates when rates drop are hit and miss. I use carrentals.com a lot and by the time they send me an update, I often have found a lower rate on my own. They have saved me some money on occasions but it isn't as good a tool as you would think. I also wrote to carrentals and told them that if they could include the company promo for a rental car, I would use their site instead of the company's site. I get a 5% discount from Payless Perks club, which I can't use on the carrentals website. So, for the $4 difference, I will book on payless even though I used carrentals to find the rate. Carrentals wasn't interested in adding this feature to their website even though the discount is paid by payless and I would use the carrental site instead of the payless site.
On to another car rental topic. Loss of use charge by car rental companies. I have been doing some research on line and am surprised how difficult it is to find any definitive information. So far I have found out the following:
Car rental companies view loss of use charge as the daily rate ( which may be higher than the daily rate you paid) multiplied by the number of days the vehicle is out of service. Also, they include an administrative fee which may or may not be based on any actual cost to the company. Also, this fee is charged regardless of whether the loss of use of this vehicle costs them any actual rental income and the fee is based on the daily rate ( revenue) and not the profit on renting that vehicle ( income). In loss of use fees determination, the car companies seem to believe that all costs associated with an actual rental ( wear and tear, depreciation due to mileage, writing of the contract, car wash, shuttle bus, etc) mysteriously disappear and their cost is the actual daily rental fee. No wonder rental car companies are so aggressive in collecting this fee. It's way, way more profitable than actually renting a car.
In looking at some legal websites, loss of use is supposed to 'make the company whole' for not being able to use the vehicle for a certain period of time. It should be based on the loss of profit, not loss of revenue and it should reflect the actual profit from that rental. It should also use a 'reasonable' repair time.
So, you can see the great divide on this loss of income fee. Rental car companies won't give up their fleet utilization data ( somehow that is proprietary), nor the itemized repair cost nor the actual length of time for the repairs. If your credit card company covers loss of use ( not all do), they often times will pay a $300 - $500 loss of use claim instead of the cost of fighting it.
I'm not even sure the rental car company has to fix the vehicle in order to charge the loss of use. The rental car companies typically use a 3rd party company to bill out the accident claim and the third party probably gets paid based on how much they collect.
Some websites advocate taking the rental car companies ldw coverage to avoid this whole mess.
I tried to find the actual Nevada statute on the topic but haven't found out anything on what is legally chargeable in Nevada.
I will keep doing my search and report out to the group. The bad thing about this loss of use fee is that the rental car company doesn't have disclose how it got the loss of use number and has a huge incentive to make this number as big as they can.
I strongly advise taking lots of pictures when you rent the vehicle ( so you don't get hit with a phantom charge) and if you are in an accident, be prepared for quite a bit.
