Renting a car in the US

[Groovytiger]

We need to hire a car on a forthcoming trip to Texas. Which is the best website/ company to book through?

Who are you flying with? Fly drive can be good value ( we've picked up/dropped cars part way through the holiday, with BA/Avis).

We’ve booked USA holidays separately rather than a package as we like the road trip style.

We’ve used Virgin Holidays only for car hire.

You’re paying in UK, often there’s a dedicated desk for Virgin customers at the car hire pick up and as it’s prebooked we’ve never had the upsell attempted when picking up.

Last couple of times picking up from an airport, in the multi-storey they had all cars in a particular class on the same row. It was first come first served. We also took our own Tom-Tom for which we’d paid for the USA maps. Whilst higher spec cars will have satnav built in, buying the Tom Tom map was cheaper than paying extra for a satnav especially if you’re thinking of going again.

I’ve found that if you can get onto the US websites as opposed to the British ones e.g. hertz .com versus hertz .co.uk then you get about 3 times as much choice and often it’s cheaper too. For instance I wanted to rent a large SUV at Denver airport, on the british website there were only mid sized cars but on the US site there were tons of large cars available to choose from.

Thanks for your tips. We wouldn't be renting the car from the airports, but from a town an hour away where they have a few dealerships (friend collecting us from airport when we arrive). I will try going on one of the US Sites to see what they offer and if it is cheaper. Not much seems to be coming up on Holiday Autos

There is a huge shortage of rental cars in the US currently. Many rental car companies sold their vehicles during COVID to keep themselves afloat.

Be careful of the Ts and Cs of booking on the US sites. The prices are often cheaper as the insurance is not included. Most auto insurance policies here for private vehicles cover the driver for a rental vehicle within the US also. Your UK insurance will not be valid here so you’ll have to pay extra for insurance.

Just be very careful when you take car back that you don’t get charged for extras. We got charged for a childs car seat that we never had, but my husband just signed the document given, not knowing he was signing for being charged the extra. We tried to contact them for refund, but no luck. Also take photos of car when you collect and take a good look at the car for any dents or scratches. We’ve hired cars from airport or had included in holiday package with Virgin.

We have used Alamo several times and never been charged extra. Just make sure you take out collision damage waiver (CDW). We hit a deer in Yosemite and there was quite a lot of damage to the car (the deer was OK thank goodness). The park ranger logged the damage and told us to contact Alamo which we did when we got to our hotel (this holiday predated mobile phones). Alamo were really good and just asked if we had CDW, then said not to worry.