Comments on: Get Cheap Car Rentals From Priceline (or Hotwire)

By: Maple

Maple — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:27:21 +0000

Priceline sucks! I hate priceline with a passion. Do not use it. it’s a total rip off!

By: Savings With Sadie

Savings With Sadie — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:01:11 +0000

Hello -

Your carnival submission has been posted. Don’t forget to grab the post permalink to link your post back to the carnival for the convenience of readers. Thanks for participating. Next month, we will be setting a theme around holiday savings.

Lisa

By: Nico

Nico — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:30:33 +0000

Followed your tip to check out Hotwire first then bid 20% under on Priceline — and it worked! Thanks.

Expedia and the rental car company site had prices at about $50 for an intermediate-sized car. Hotwire had it for $26. I bid $20 on priceline. That’s more than a 50% savings, and the car will come from Avis.

By: Lily

Lily — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:52:46 +0000

I’ve never used priceline for car rentals but have used it for hotels and am 100% pleased! A year ago I bid $40 for a 4-star in Bakersfield, CA and it was accepted. Since then I’ve had to bid about $50 to get the same type of hotel. In San Francisco, I bid $60 last year and got an extremely lovely 4 star hotel in Union Square. This year it took a bid of $70.00 to get a similar hotel in Union Square. At the latter, I was taking my niece to SF for her first time experience. Since the weather was nice I asked for an upgrade and it only cost me an additional $50 to upgrade to a lovely room on a city-view floor (28th floor). It may have made a difference that I schedule all my lodging during week days. Not weekends.

By: steve

steve — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:45:34 +0000

@Craig: I’ve gotten great deals on hotels thru priceline, by naming your own price. It was also the weekend though. I’ve gotten $49-$59/night at the Hilton in Columbia, MD.

Obviously it depends on the city and state you want.

I haven’t tried Hotwire yet.

By: craig

craig — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:57:07 +0000

I have yet to use priceline but have heard you can get good deals last minute on hotels. Not so much for the other services but mostly hotels.

By: Kevin@OutOfYourRut

Kevin@OutOfYourRut — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:27:33 +0000

I think the discounters can work if you travel light, that is no kids in tow! If you’re traveling with more than two people, you lose the flexibilty to do the stand by thing, or the waiting thing.

Personally, I can put up with a lot of surprises, but my family… that’s another story.

By: Suzanne

Suzanne — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:11:56 +0000

I did not have a good experience with PriceLine. I rented a mid-size car for 9 days for my trip to Florida last November. The car shown pictured was a Pontiac Grand Am – I have rented and owned one in the past and found it to be very comfortable and functional. I arrived at the car rental counter only to find out their version of a mid size car was a roller skate on wheels! I had to do an expensive upgrade to get the equivalent of what I thought I had signed on for.
I would advise everyone to check the issuer’s site (Enterprise, Alamo, etc) to verify what they rent in each catagoriy so you know what type of vehicle you will really be given upon arrival at the rental counter before you sign on!

By: steve

steve — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:01:04 +0000

I’ve always had good luck with Priceline. I’ve gotten rental cars for $12/day in certain cities. But it doesn’t happen all the time. But it always worth a shot.

One thing to consider: If the rental company has a retail office near the airport and provides free pickup, you may save about $100 in airport usage and taxes, for a weeks rental.

If a rental car shuttle at the airport takes you to an office site office, this is not it. It’s actual store locations.

By: KC

KC — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:21:10 +0000

I’ve used Priceline for car rentals for many years and always been satisfied. However you used to get a much deeper discount than you can now – that is the nature of the car rental business now, not Priceline. Recently we tried to rent a car in Seattle for a week. I was appalled that prices were over $60/day for a standard (which is a step down from what we normally drive, or so I thought). We weren’t able to get much more than $2 a day knocked off the cheapest price I could find. But that was a few dollars less. We get there (Hertz) and we find out our standard car is a friggin Kia. My husband “upgraded” to a Corolla. We feared for our lives everytime we got on the highway and we had to yell at each other over the incredible noise in the cabin. But, alas, that its the nature of the car rental business now. It costs a fortune and you get some little bitty car. It used to be airline prices that kept me from flying, but now it is car rental prices that keep me from flying. If I’m going anywhere east of the Mississippi I’m driving there myself – it is considerably cheaper.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:00:41 +0000

Four years ago I used Priceline to book a hotel in London. To avoid a rat motel in a scary neighborhood, I set my parameters to hotels rated 4+ stars and affluent neighborhoods.

We ended up in a Holiday Inn (more a business hotel in Europe) in the Kensington neighborhood, only a block away from the tube. My researched bid of $75 a night was accepted (and paid to priceline in US dollars, so no need to worry about the conversion cost). All other options would have cost double that plus subject to currency conversion costs.

The only downside was that when my husband and I arrived, we discovered that our room had 2 twin beds instead of a double. When we asked about an upgrade, it would have cost us another $150 a night.

By: The Daily Mickey

The Daily Mickey — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:51:11 +0000

I’ve rented cars via Priceline twice this year and both experiences were positive ones. I was able to get both rentals (economy size) for approximately $40/day. They were both positive experiences and I’ll definitely use Priceline for future rentals.