The Rowe Family Blog

Recently I rented a car from Alamo for a family vacation.  I was amazed at how successfully car rental companies rip people off.  Some of the ways are obvious and some are not quite as obvious.

Switcheroo

When was the last time that you reserved a car and actually got a car even similar to what you reserved?  Out of about a dozen times that I’ve rented cars I think I’ve gotten what I reserved maybe a third of the time.  In almost every case the car rental company doesn’t have what was reserved and so they offer you a free “upgrade.”  In every case the upgrade was for a vehicle that was far less fuel efficient than what I had reserved.  To me that’s not an upgrade.  Unless this is related to the “Gas Scam” (see below) the car rental company doesn’t really benefit from this.  As a customer it becomes frustrating because my potentially significant fuel costs just increased.  When I rented from Alamo and the “mini-suv” that I reserved wasn’t available I was offered a full size vehicle.  When I said I didn’t want that because of fuel costs they offered me a Pruis at no additional charge.  In that case I made out better and I was quite pleased (except that the lot attendant couldn’t start the car and I had no idea how…but I figured it out eventually).

Insurance

Most people are aware that most personal auto insurance covers rental cars.  This means that you do not need to purchase additional insurance if you are happy with your own coverage.  In addition I’m almost certain that both Visa and Mastercard provide coverage if you purchase the rental using their credit cards.  I believe the credit card insurance benefit is only applicable if you do not have personal auto insurance.

I’m not even sure it’s possible anymore but I suppose you could rent a car using cash and you don’t have an auto insurance policy.  If you aren’t excessively wealthy you’d likely want to buy coverage from the rental company.  When I rented a few weeks ago they offered coverage at about $30.00 per day.  A full year of coverage at this price would be just shy of $11,000.  Would you pay 11 grand for auto insurance?  Of course people don’t consider this when they are at the rental counter with 15 frustrated people behind them.

Additional Drivers

Another way they rip you off is by charging for additional drivers.  Considering that they don’t provide insurance to you unless you pay for it I see no reason why it should cost extra to allow for an additional driver.  Alamo wanted to charge $10 per day for an additional driver.  Yeah right, I’m not paying an additional $100 for a 10 day vacation just so that Mary could drive the car.  Our entire rental was about $330 including $50 for a car seat rental.  To have an additional driver authorized to drive the vehicle they wanted to charge a 30% premium?

Gas Scam

What about the whole “bring it back empty/bring it back full” scam?  Most rental companies give you the option of pre paying for a full tank of gas at their “discounted” rate.  If you do that you need to bring the car back as close to empty as possible to get your moneys worth.  Forget that this is a major hassle; consider what they are actually charging you.  When I got to the rental counter this option listed out the capacity of the gas tank of the car that I had reserved.  Have you ever looked at the specs for your car?  My Toyota Celica has a 14 gallon tank.  Even when I was within one bar of empty and then filled the tank completely it took no more than 12 gallons.  This is because there is quite a bit of “reserve” fuel in the tank.  You can drive on empty for quite a while.  This means that it’s nearly impossible to actually return the tank empty and you’d risk missing your flight even if you could perform this magical feat.

If you consider a vehicle like a Celica with a 14 gallon tank and assume that you used 12 gallons then you gave back two gallons of gas for which they will not refund you.  They pre-charged you for $56.00 (14 gallons at $4 per gallon.  That means that the gas really cost you $4.67 per gallon.  Not only would it have been far cheaper to fill the car yourself but you would save yourself the hassle of trying to return the car empty instead of full.  In reality the car rental companies probably make out far better than this example.

In many cases the gas is precharged before you even get the actual vehicle you will be driving!  When I reserved a “mini-suv” Alamo offered the prepaid gas option for a Saturn Vue.  After signing the contract I picked up the car — which was NOT a Saturn Vue because they didn’t have any left on the lot.  I’m not sure how they’d rectify that, if at all.