How to Pick a Rental Car Company

There are so many rental car companies around that it may seem difficult to decide which one you should use. If you need to rent a car, you should take time to research your options before you make a reservation.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Think about location before anything else. The location of a rental car company should be your first consideration. You want a company that has an office near the place that you will be traveling.

2. Find out what models each company has in their fleet of cars. Most rental car agencies separate their cars into different classes: economy, intermediate, luxury and full-size vehicles.

3. Look for a company that offers specials. For example, Enterprise offers 50 percent off of vehicles that are rented during the weekend.

4. Rent a car from a company that has special features in their vehicles. You may wish to choose a rental car company, like Thrifty, that has GPS installed in many of their cars.

5. Use an online travel site to compare prices (see Resources below). These websites allow you to compare prices of all rental car agencies found in a specific location.

Tips & Warnings

• You need to check with each rental car company to see if you can reserve a certain type of car in their fleet.
• Ask each rental car company what type of insurance comes with each vehicle. Pick the company with the most comprehensive insurance plan.

Resources

• Compare rental car companies on Orbitz.

[hersco]

on 7/28/2009 Comapre well rates, like www.hotels-rentacar.com does. Some other site doesn't compare properly, ie. ooh fees, extras not always includes.