Renting Cars: Bargain Places

If you are renting a car in Italy for a month and can pick up and return the vehicle in Rome, check the price of the Peugeot leasing plan at AutoEurope. It might be less expensive than renting for the same period.

Actually I am renting the car in Lecce in Pulgia as I am staying in the far south near the very tip of the peninsula not far from Santa Maria di Lueca. I will be leaving Italy at Bari so Rome doesn't work for me. But thanks for the tip.

But your comment brings up another issue. Yes sometimes the Leasing option can be cheaper but one has to be careful about the costs of backtracking. Also dropping off in another city can more often than not be a very hefty increase.

Just out of curiosity I did go to AutoEurope Leasing for Rome for the exact same dates as my rental. It would be $1892! This versus $481.35 from Europcar for 30 days.

This jogged my memory and indeed I had checked this at the time. I guess the moral is that the "Conventional Wisdom" is not always true.

So the lesson here is Check both dont assume the advice written in so many places is always correct. I think if I was renting vs leasing in FRANCE the leasing probably would be cheaper.

I always check Kayak, but usually end up reserving directly with the cheapest rental car company. Have you used the cheap aggregators before in Europe without problems?

Yes I have in Europe and other places around the world and it is perfectly legit. What you need to make sure of is this: If you rent a car say through Carrental.com but it's an Avis car lets say in Bulgaria then what they will send you is an email reservation confirmation from the Aggregator in this case Carrental.com WITH the AVIS CONFIRMATION NUMBER. Secondly that email will or should be followed by an email from AVIS with the same info. When I get the Confirmation page on the original aggregators site I print it as a .pdf file for reference to compare with the final confirmation emails.

If I dont get the email from the actual car rental company then I go to the actual car rental site and look up my reservation. So far they have always been there and the details accurate.
(I do usually limit myself to the well known companies Like Avis, Europecar, Hertz, Sixt etc.)

Car rentals are the one area of travel, unlike hotels and Airfares where I find actually Better prices with the Aggregators and not directly with the company. When doing airfares I always start with the aggregators, find the best price and then go directly to the Airline's site. This often results in a BETTER price than I was getting from the Aggregator.

Another tip: If I am seeing higher prices than I think are normal I will wait a day or two, delete my cookies on my computer and re-do the search. This has often resulted in lower prices for the same place and dates.

Have found hotwire to work well also. They tell you a price, but not the company, but to me most rental car companies seem the same in service. I use them a lot in the US and a few times in Europe with no issues. I generally end up with Hertz or Avis for a good price in the US. In Europe we generally get Europe Car or Hertz so far.

Try EconomyCarRentals . They're a broker and reserve a car with various agencies. I booked a car in Croatia for two weeks with them in 2015 and they got me a car with a local Croatian company called Oryx. I didn't think $12/day was expensive, though that didn't include extra insurance.

Others have used Kemwel and AutoEurpe with good luck, but I think AutoEurope pre-charges the entire rental cost up front (even though they say it is refundable til two days before you pick up the car). EconomyCarRentals charges a small up-front "deposit" only and theirs is refundable til a few days before, too.