Rental Car Nightmare

We've had issues when renting from rental car companies before. I've mentioned this our other blogs (by the way, if the amount that you owe goes over the amount that insurance is willing to pay, offer to split the difference with them, I did, and it saved me $100. Never hurts to ask.) When I went on my business trip for 2 days to Cleveland, I had reserved a car with National rental. We have a corporate account with them and I get a discount. When I arrived at 1:30 am, they were closed, and I was upset, so I went down to Avis rental car. They put all my information in the system, and we started talking about options. I told them that I needed a comfortable car as I was driving over 300 miles that day. They offered a Ford Focus. No, I said, they mentioned that was the biggest car they had at the time. They also said that I could get an SUV. I asked them what the difference was in price. The price between a medium size car and an SUV was identical. I found out that often times, prices on premium cars or regular cars is sometimes as little as .01$. I took a Ford Expedition and drove in style for the day. Never hurts to ask. Now, this was a little splurge, as I only got 18 MPG, and since the U of I pays mileage, the better mileage I get, the more I come out ahead. The U of I pays me .17 cents per mile (I can deduct the difference on my taxes), even at 18 MPG, since the cost of gas was cheaper in Ohio, I still came out ahead. To avoid gas at all, they do have a feature where for a set price ($2.99 a gallon) you can buy a full tank and then not have to worry about filling up. The unused gas is non-refundable though. By the way, don't buy the insurance on the rental cars that they try to get you to buy. It's a rip off, and if you have good insurance, and you are a decent driver, it's a total waste of money.

I've used Enterprise rental car before too. They have a nice program where you don't buy the prepaid tank, but you return the car as empty as you want, and they fill it up for you. The bonus here is their gas is greatly reduced. Their gas was about .20 cents lower per gallon than what you paid at the pump. Great combo: convenience and discounted cost.