Last October, my boyfriend, best friend and I went on a road trip! Well tbh it was part road and part air travel but you get me. We were ambitious budget travellers so you’ll see quite quickly why I love the car hire comparison site Rentalcars.com!
We started in the sunny southeast of Ireland, flew over to Vancouver, Canada, took a bus across the border to the US and then we drove the rest of the way to Ojai, California. From there we flew to Denver, drove to Chicago and slowly made our way to Florida–eventually ending up where we are now on my home island in the Bahamas. Most of the cars we booked, we found on the car hire comparison site RentalCars.com.
This trip would not have been possible without the lovely Couchsurfing hosts who put us up and the ridiculously cheap rentals we managed to find along the way. If you’ve ever used Rentalcars.com before, it’s easy to understand why I love finding cheap car hire on their site!
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What is car hire comparison site RentalCars.com
Thankfully they chose a name which is easy to remember and lets us know exactly what we’re getting into! Rentalcars.com is one of the world’s largest online car hire booking sites.
You can search for rentals in more than 60,000 locations from over 800 car hire companies in 160 countries. Your booking can be managed over the phone, online or through the app.
Like Skyscanner, Rentalcars.com compares the prices of hundreds of providers to bring you the cheapest prices possible. Think of it like this: they do the shopping around so that you don’t have to! You’ll be happy to know that Rentalcars.com also has brands you’ll recognise like Hertz, Enterprise and Thrifty.
A bit of backstory on our road trip
We were also open to car hire but painfully aware that it could be the pricier option for the distance we needed to travel. Since public transportation would take ages, and none of us had ANY experience buying let alone maintaining a car, we decided to go with car hire.
The more we researched, the clearer it became that one-way car hire would best suit the flow of the trip. So now we had an idea of where we were going and how we were going to get there.
Unfortunately, as soon as we changed our searches to get advice on one-way rentals, we found post after post warning us about how expensive it can be and that we might run in to hefty drop-off fees and hidden fees. That’s when the nerves started setting in. We would be effectively unemployed in a couple of months and the trip was out of our budget.
We needed this trip! It’s all we talked about and the reason we didn’t have jobs lined up for the Autumn. After several long but wonderful years as volunteers, we were ready to go to bed without a timetable the next day and to be flexible to go anywhere.
Rentalcars.com helped us find multiple vehicles with NO drop-off fees
Our decision to book mostly one-way rentals prompted a flurry of googling and reading the fine print on the big brands’ rental agreements. It seemed at every turn we’d be slapped with drop-off fees in the hundreds of dollars.
During one particularly depressing planning meeting, one member of our group found car after car with no drop-off fee. She came across RentalCars.com and was finding rentals we could actually afford. It seemed too good to be true so we all tried. I was shocked. We all got the same results–NO DROP-OFF FEE.
That’s when the nerves started setting in. We would be effectively unemployed in a couple of months and the trip was out of our budget.
In the end, we booked three cars with Thrifty which we found on Rentalcars.com
To show you how amazing the prices were, here’s an example using our first car:
- 2nd-6th Nov: Economy (we nabbed the Ford Fusion SE Hybrid–great car and good on petrol!) – Full to full – Pick up at noon at Seattle airport – Drop-off at noon at San Francisco Airport – £135.89 (+deposit fee which is temporarily blocked off your card until the car is returned). NO DROP OFF FEE. Cost per person £45.30. Distance travelled 809 miles (1301.96 km).
Since this was our first car and we’d be travelling through 3 states, we played it safe and added roadside assistance in the event anything happened. Okay fine! The nice guy at the desk convinced us. It was the random nail on the highway and paying to get towed analogy that got me.
In the end, nothing happened. There was no nail. Going forward we skimped on the other rentals and didn’t add that on again. Despite our decision, I encourage you to go with your conviction and research for your rental. Just because we didn’t that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Once you have your basic coverage (eg. if I hit you or you hit me), just carefully consider which if any add-on you need for the type of journey you’re making.
Finding a car with car hire comparison site RentalCars.com is easy and fees are transparent
RentalCars.com brings you some of the best prices on car hire by comparing more than 800 companies in thousands of locations. There are no amendment fees, 24/7 phone support (I haven’t used this yet), free cancellation and price match guarantee. For our one-way journeys, we used Hertz and Thrifty. They offered us the best prices for what we needed and we never paid more than the estimate we received when we collected the car.
Actually, we have an additional fee once. It was on us though. We returned a car a couple of hours late after a much-needed lie in to recover from open bar festivities that weekend!
Most of the RentalCars.com cars came with the following basic coverage:
- Collision Damage Waiver (CDW): if you maintain the terms of the rental agreement and the bodywork of the car gets damaged, the most you’ll pay towards repairs is the damage excess
- Third-Party Liability (TPL): if you maintain the terms of the rental agreement, the driver’s liability is covered for injuries and property damage included in the policy. Injuries to the driver and damage to the rental car are not covered
Some cars also came with Theft Protection (TP), Liability Insurance and Uninsured Motorist Protection (UMP). If you feel you need more protection, go for it! The goal of our group was to save as much as possible. We talked through the rental process of each car and came to a decision based on that conversation and our budget.
Usually, we went with an economy car and the minimum amount of coverage with the exception of the Denver to Chicago leg. There was a snowstorm so we were encouraged to upgrade to 4-wheel drive.
They got us on that one but we refused to pay for a toll pass. Instead we set our navigation to avoid toll roads and we double checked the route before setting off. We needed to feel like we won somewhere.
There are benefits to subscribing to the email list for Rentalcars.com
Rentalcars.com already brings you some of the best prices on car hire. If you subscribe to their email list you also gain access to their email only deals. Intrigued?
Your free subscription allows you to have access to special offers on top off the already cheap prices for rentals! You’ll be the first to know when they have fantastic deals on and how you can take advantage of them.
One of the deals I received a couple of months ago was an opportunity to save up to 20% on any Hertz rental between 11/02/2019 and 07/04/2019 in addition to free cancellation, free amendments and price match guarantee.
If we were not able to find one-way rentals that we could afford, our trip would’ve been very different. I’m thrilled it worked out the way we wanted because this trip was our last hurrah before we started planning our next steps. We put so much energy into organising it. I would’ve been gutted if it didn’t all come together.
RentalCars.com saved us loads of time by comparing the prices of one-way car hire to find the best ones for us without drop-off fees. We could also count on the fact that the price we started our rental with was the one we ended with when we returned the car. The security deposit that was blocked off was lifted as well with no issues. It was a relatively painless experience. I still can’t believe it all went so well.
That’s the way renting a car should be–easy.
Yours in (affordable air, water and land) travel,
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