By RJ Crawford
Tips on Saving Money on a Car Rental
Making a car rental choice can be a frustrating task. What do you do if the price goes down after you have made your reservation? A new service we found may interest you. It is called www.autoslash.com . If you make your reservation though www.autoslash.com their computer system will keep searching the web to get you the lowest price until the date you travel. They will also apply any coupon code that works and change your reservation to the lowest rate available.
The only problem that I can see with booking with www.autoslash.com is that many of the largest car rental brands have refused to participate. Well, it is a game. The car rental companies try to charge you as much as the market will bear, and you try to get the lowest rate possible. So, use every web tool you can to get the best rate.
A second step I would suggest as a back up is to check the rates on www.kayak.com, one of our favorite booking systems. They will check hundreds of websites to get you the lowest rate. Another good filter to run your car rental through is to check the rental rates with organizations that you belong to or your credit union. Usually, the larger the organization, the steeper the discount.
A last method you may try for making an overseas reservation is to search that country's websites. Believe it or not, large travel companies, including car rentals, hotels and airlines, have different prices available depending on which country you make the reservation in. For example, if you are traveling to the United Kingdom, go to www.google.com and type in "United Kingdom website" in the search and that will pull up a link for the Google server for that country, www.google.co.uk/ Your VISA, MASTERCARD and American Express cards are your passport to making overseas reservations. Remember that currency exchange charges may apply to your credit card if you charge in a foreign currency, so find out the true bottom line costs for your rental when making reservations.
Call the credit card companies with which you have credit cards and ask if they add currency exchange charges on overseas rentals or purchases. There are few American credit cards which do not add currency exchange charges, but that is another story. For example, certain American Express cards do not add this charge while other type cards with the same company do charge those fees.
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