Priced Rental Cars lately? Holy Cow!

[slowgoesit]

So I read an article yesterday stating that due to Covid 19, and less people traveling, etc, rental car companies sold off about half of their fleet in order to pay bills, and now that it is opening back up, rental cars are in REALLY short supply, so prices are ridiculous! Examples:
Orlando, FL, Compact car - $300+/day
Maui, HI, Compact car - $744/day
I just looked at renting a car in Seattle for 6 days at the end of May while I go back to move our boat to a new moorage - $944 for 6 days for a Kia Rio!
Also puts a crimp on pulling into port and renting a car for to get around town! People are resorting to renting U-haul trucks instead of rental cars . . . . thereby causing a shortage of U-haul trucks for people wanting to move

.

 

[Alaskaflyer]

Yes, just priced one in Seattle also in May. A car that through a membership would normally be in the mid-twenties per day before fees and taxes, is now in the low fifty dollar range

 

[JLD]

I think the recommendations are that one books a rental asap. It is much easier to cancel down the road rather than try to find a rental car later (at what will likely be an even higher rate!)

Jim

 

[Seevee]

Even Uber has gone up a lot.



And, yes pays to rent early. Heck if one is gonna be there for a few weeks you could buy a car and wholesale it back to the seller and probably come out ahead.



Also, auto dealerships often have great deals. A recent one delivered a car to my plane, I kept it for three days and they picked it up and total including everything was less than $100. And, it was a big old battleaxe comfy car.

 

[BandB]

They don't have the cars and don't know when they'll get them as manufacturers aren't going to give priority to fleets.

Try a one way rental and even worse.

Then the alternative is a truck, Uhaul or Budget. Some are finding them, but try to get one one way and you'll pay dearly.

I fully expect auto prices to rise and continuing pressure on availability throughout the year. Chips are the biggest problem but many other parts are delayed as well.

 

[ScottC]

Ugh! I can remember renting a compact in Orlando only a few years ago for~$250/WEEK!

 

[High Wire]

I rented a sub compact in Ft Myers in December for $48/day. Enterprise. They no longer deliver. Our local UHaul dealers seem to have plenty of the box vans.

 

[kthoennes]

Yep. We tried to go to Florida over Easter weekend to visit my dad in (Stuart). Of course that was spring break for most colleges and a holiday weekend so we expected to pay more, but the rental car rates were burst-out-laughing ridiculous. One time we checked Orlando (SFB or MCO) was $1,100 per day -- and I mean for something like a Kia Squirt, not an Escalade. I could have bought a car on Craiglist for less, and then given it back to the seller. Orlando, Tampa, Miami, Ft Laud, you name it, the four day weekend charges were astronomical. In the past we typically get a rental car in Orlando for about $20 per day. The rental car charges -- if you could get a car at all -- were going to be more than the hotel, and more than tickets for all four of us. Utterly absurd. We rented a mountain retreat condo in the Black Hills for the long weekend instead, for about half what the FL car rental charges would have been. More and more I feel like I'm living in some Third World country where tomorrow a loaf of bread could be $192 because of a sudden shortage of yeast.

 

[warfdog]

Well this explains a mystery to me - just got back from a trip to Tucson that was planned at the last minute (Funeral) and the rental agencies were sold out completely for weeks in any direction. I did get lucky and found a rental available at a satellite agency about 10 miles from the airport and didn't pay any more than usual but it took a lot of searching to find the available vehicle. I had no idea that the big rental companies had sold off their inventories. Now I get it...

https://www.thedrive.com/news/40192...age-because-companies-sold-them-all-last-year

https://www.ktvu.com/news/rental-car-companies-selling-off-inventory-of-used-vehicles

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hertz-avis-enterprise-rental-car-shortage-11618335385

So where were the bargains as their cars flooded the used car market?

 

[HopCar]

Some friends of mine in Miami were planning a long vacation out west. They don’t want to drive, so they planned to fly there and rent a car. Now they are trying to hire someone to drive their car out west to them. They would pay the return airfare.

 

[Woodland Hills]

No bargains in the used market since so many people who were afraid of taking buses and trains to work bought them all as soon as they hit the market.

 

[denverd0n]

Orlando, FL, Compact car - $300+/day.

Just checked online. Compact car out of Orlando, $62 per day. A little higher than the last time I rented a car, but not outrageous.

 

[BandB]

Just checked online. Compact car out of Orlando, $62 per day. A little higher than the last time I rented a car, but not outrageous.

It comes and goes thanks to the current practice of demand pricing. You may see $62 today and may see $300 tomorrow. Imagine being in the business and someone gets a quote and doesn't rent and then comes back and it's 3 times as much and they are furious. We see it on hotel rooms, on apartment pricing, everywhere and I hate the practice, but it's maximizing profits so will continue.

 

[denverd0n]

Can't say I'm surprised that it is a lot more during high demand times -- holidays, spring break, whatever. Supply and demand. I have tried to maximize profits every time I have sold a house, a used car, or a boat. Just like everyone else, all the time, everywhere. So I can hardly blame a business if they do the same.

 

[JLD]

One nice thing about flying into Florida is that there are a lot of options when it comes to airports. For example, when we visit my Mom in The Villages, Orlando is the closest airport, but we often fly into Jacksonville instead, as we usually find it cheaper for both airfares and rental cars

Jim

 

[Robster_in_edmonds]

Maui was up to $1,000 per day!

We live on Maui, moved here after retirement. A couple of weeks ago some people I met golfing told me their car rental reservation that had been set up months ago was cancelled without their knowledge, and the rental car person at the airport told them "Corporate" had ordered them to cancel all reservations and rent cars out at $1,000 per day. Even at that rate they were sold out! I think things have improved somewhat, but wow, just wow...

 

[ssobol]

If you aren't going to places popular with tourists, the rental car prices are pretty much what they used to be. The sudden influx of travelers at holiday destinations and the shortage of cars has made it a seller's market (as in "gouge the people from out of town").

 

[denverd0n]

..."Corporate" had ordered them to cancel all reservations and rent cars out at $1,000 per day.

Well now, that is just sleazy. Supply and demand is fine. Charge what the market will bear. But once you've made a deal with someone (taken their reservation at a particular price) then honor the deal!

As far as I am concerned, a company that cancels a deal just because they think they can force you to pay more is no better than any scummy, low-life scammer.

 

[BandB]

If you aren't going to places popular with tourists, the rental car prices are pretty much what they used to be. The sudden influx of travelers at holiday destinations and the shortage of cars has made it a seller's market (as in "gouge the people from out of town").

I was curious if that was true. I checked some decidedly non tourist areas and found they were 50-100% above previous levels. The specials were just not available. The subcompact's that normally led the way at $20-25 a day were $40-60. So not like tourist areas, but still up.

 

[kthoennes]

I did some spot checking too just for kicks. It's gotten highly volatile too, like airline ticket prices. You check one minute, it's double or triple what used to be normal rates (like $120 for a subcompact in ATL), and then you check an hour later and it's $400 per day, then $200 per day, then $80. Craziness.

 

[RT Firefly]

Greetings,
Are there any anti-profiteering laws being invoked in these high demand destinations?



Eg: https://ag.ks.gov/media-center/news...law-now-in-effect-for-virus-response-supplies

 

[JLD]

I was curious if that was true. I checked some decidedly non tourist areas and found they were 50-100% above previous levels. The specials were just not available. The subcompact's that normally led the way at $20-25 a day were $40-60. So not like tourist areas, but still up.

I guess this doesn't surprise me. I don't see why rental agencies couldn't move cars into areas with higher demand. This in turn would lower the number of cars in non-tourist areas and those prices would rise as well.

Jim

 

[kthoennes]

I keep thinking of business models and pricing strategy, and it always seems to me if you're a big car rental company, you want the use the Walmart model to make the most money. Maximum rentals to the most number of people. Yes, you can use the West Marine model -- high markups for the much fewer need-it-now people, high margins on a much lower volume than Walmart. And like the airlines you want to be able to capture the full array of consumers, the full range of price takers, from the business traveler pay-anythings to the college kids who will fly squeezed into an overhead compartment for $49. But this car rental situation doesn't make sense to me. Surely $1000 per day is beyond what 99% of renters are able or willing to pay. I know you have to find the sweet spot, the max return on the revenue curve for your given inventory (or slide around on the curve like the airlines), but take me for example. I could theoretically pay $1000 per day, but I certainly won't because that's insane. If the cost of the car rental exceeds the plane tickets or the hotel room for the trip, then I'll just do something else, or go at some other time and they make nothing from me.

 

[ranger58sb]

???

I just reserved a car for next week at Tampa, no obvious availability issues, prices same as usual...

???

-Chris

 

[Alaskaflyer]

I suspect that much of it is from algorithms having gone insane due to normal inventory/demand parameters having been exceeded, more than deliberate gouging. Even so.

Still finding sub and compact cars about $20-30/day more expensive than usual in major metro areas - Seattle, Boston, Raleigh-Durham, New Orleans. Haven't run into any of those astronomical/comical price spikes yet.

 

[slowgoesit]

Another tip when doing on-line comparison shopping at various sites. If you check out a flight for instance, on say, Travelocity, then check back an hour later, you often find that the price has gone up . . . "Hurry, reserve that flight NOW, it's only going to get more expensive!" Wait, hold on there, sign out of your browser, clear all your cookies from that site, and don't go back in immediately with your user name. Search the same flight again, price is generally back to the original price . . . THEN if you want the flight at that price, sign in and buy it.

They often set it up so return customers checking the same item/commodity, are identified by the previous cookies saved to your computer, and the price automatically goes up the next time you check the price, etc. Food for thought!
On my original travel reservations to Seattle, a friend is going to pick me up at the airport and loan me a car for free, vs paying $944.00 for a Kia Rio for 6 days (5 nights) . So that's one car that will not be rented out, at least to me . . . but they'll probably rent it out to someone else on an expense account for an exorbitant rate . . .

 

[Alaskaflyer]

For an extended Labor Day weekend in Memphis, $83/day before taxes and fees for a compact car, through Costco Travel

 

[ssobol]

​

For an extended Labor Day weekend in Memphis, $83/day before taxes and fees for a compact car, through Costco Travel

Pretty good deal IMO. I'm in Dallas right now and the best I could get was just over $100/day. In June in Seattle it was over $200/day.

 

[bnoft]

It's been a few years but we rented a U-Haul truck a couple of times as it was much less expensive than a rental car, about 1/2 the cost. Not quite as comfortable but easy drop-off. Next time if we pass thru a college town, I might see if I can pick up a load.

 

[BandB]

It's been a few years but we rented a U-Haul truck a couple of times as it was much less expensive than a rental car, about 1/2 the cost. Not quite as comfortable but easy drop-off. Next time if we pass thru a college town, I might see if I can pick up a load.

I've known that to be the case but truck rental companies have the same issues right now. We rent trucks and while local rates have only increased marginally, the rates on corporately owned trucks for one way rentals have skyrocketed. In fact, we had a very creative manager on a recent move of a couple from SC to FL. The corporate quote was outrageous so he did a local rental for them and they allowed an employee to ride along who then returned in the truck. Saved them over $600 and still they paid at least an extra $200.