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I’m looking at car rental for USA in April and seeing best prices prob with AVIS around £60-70 a day (Presidents Club v Sixt Platinum), but if I look closer to now, like within 2 weeks, it drops to about £50 a day or lower.
Is it better to leave it until closer to the time, admittedly with the risk of availability becoming less….but then again busy periods will already be factored into the price?
Best bet is to book a cancelable rate now and keep checking.
When in April? Pricing will depend partly on demand, so if you’re travelling over Easter, for example, you may find prices going up, not down.
I’ve been looking at Northern California for the best part of a year. After an initial “this is going to bankrupt me” the price dropped significantly a few months ago and was then stable with Avis. I finally got round to booking last week (at the same price it’s been for some time) and paid £410 for 13 days. This was a big car as Mrs Froggee insists that I take clean clothes and other unnecessary stuff. A smaller car was not much over £300.
I suspect there is a decent chance that the prices within two weeks are demand now versus demand for Easter break.
If you look at the Avis small print, even if you book a “pay now” rate, you can cancel it unto 48 hours before your booking commences.
Somas @Roberto says book now and watch the rates!
Best bet is to book a cancelable rate now and keep checking.
^ This.
The best time to book is as soon as you think of going (up to 1yr out), and to keep rechecking and rebooking… same as a hotel!
Have a look at Autoslash, great support from them too.
I’ve status matched most the main rental firms, and checked prices against rentalcars.com etc type websites.
Always found Avis PC the best priced…with the PC obtained from MasterCard WE.
Nice Avis CR pushed me towards the PC WE discount versus Amex Platinum PC.
Cape Town got upgraded from class C (a manual) to class M small SUV automatic. Chose the third car offered after seeing and turning down the first two
Austin Avis were amazing, I didn’t like the first car offered, after which they basically let me choose any car off the plot, opted for a giant dodge ram. They even offered a Mustang but there were 3 of us and a dog. Third driver even added for free. No push at all to buy there excess cover. Got nice restaurant recommendations to boot.
Having said that Avis Italy 5-6 years were scoundrels. Deducting for non existent damages..which we countered and won. Didn’t have status back then.
Those experiences may well reflect local CS rather than Avis per se.
Oh, fyi Avis upgrades limited to 14 day rentals.
We used Avis in Florida over Xmas and New Year – booked a luxury saloon and were given a brand new Cadillac XT6 SUV which was quite the most fabulous car I have ever been in and I am still pining for it! I think it was the perfect storm of collecting from a small office (Key West) and them just having replaced their rental vehicles after the pandemic. They also let us change our drop off location from MIA to MCO at no extra charge, I was very impressed with the service altogether.
Avis Cape Town was a bad experience for us. One hour queues even for PC, staff not sorting out the mess at the end of the two queues where nobody knew which queue is for which counter, and no upgrade. The change from manual to automatic (in the same category) was the “upgrade”.
In the end I have just booked with Avis, price came down this week to just over £50 a day for a midsize (before upgrade) which seems pretty reasonable from Bush Houston
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