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Escape from Car Rental Traps
Power Trip · October 11, 2002

If you're like most business travelers, you probably don't pay much attention to the price of your rental car.

Bad idea. If you're not careful, your bill could get run up with surcharges, extra fees and other surprises.

That's what happened to Sylvia Perryman, who rented a car at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Calif., recently. She returned the car after a day, but had to leave the keys in a drop box because the rental counter was closed. The company charged her for an extra day.

"The rental agent I spoke to on the phone told me since there was no one there to receive the key, they record the time they open the box to retrieve the key as the time of car return," she says. "I was liable for the car even though it was parked in the return location at the airport."

Perryman had to pay another $35, a charge she is disputing with the rental agency. That's just an example of what could happen to you if you don't avoid the common car rental "traps."

Here's a look at three of them:

Trap: The price isn't always right. Whether you called a car rental company's toll-free number or booked your car online, the rate you're quoted may not be the price you'll pay. Why? Because other surcharges, such as airport concession fees, license charges and local taxes, are added to your bill when you settle up. There's almost nothing these companies won't charge for.

Jeffrey Alter recently rented a car from Hertz in Toronto, and the bill included a 71 cent-per-day charge — for air conditioning. "I was shocked," he says. Marie Benz, who runs a Philadelphia Web site called Rentalcars.com, says surcharges are common: "There's a disparity between the base price — the rate you're quoted — and the sticker price, or the rate you end up paying."

How to escape: Always ask for an estimated total for the rental car. If you're booking online, Expedia.com shows all the surcharges by airport, which will help calculate the damage. Another solution: Reserve your car through Hotwire.com. The prices quoted there cover all taxes and fees.

Trap: Surprise! Insurance and gas are extra. Rental car agents are trained to sell optional insurance and fuel-purchase option plans. If you balk, they often try the hard sell, showing you pictures of damaged cars and asking, "Do you really want to pay for that?" But it's an unnecessary expense that you should resist.

Consider what happened to Richard Wong, a transit worker in Washington, D.C., who recently rented a vehicle for $19.95 a day. "Guess how much they stuck us for liability insurance?" he asks. "It was $20.95 a day — more than the rental itself. We paid it because they convinced us that our credit card didn't cover it. Not having our credit card statement of coverage in front of us, and not knowing any better, we paid."

How to escape: Read your credit card contract carefully before you rent your next car. Most cards will cover your car. As for fuel-purchase options, when is the last time you didn't see a gas station close to an airport car rental return?

Trap: Hey, it was in the contract. Car rental companies love to point to the fine print when they drive up your final bill (just ask Perryman, the California renter). It's a favorite strategy for padding their bottom line. "What, you didn't return your car with a full tank of gas? You'll have to pay for gas at quadruple the market rate — it's in the contract. Did traffic hold you up on the way to the airport? Too bad, you have to pay for another day — it's in the contract." This is perhaps the most frustrating trap to fall into, because there's no easy way out. It's unreasonable for us to be expected to read the contract. Rental agencies know that.

How to escape: Show 'em who they're messing with. The car rental companies have us over a barrel on this one. The only way to fight back is to do what Dean Kennedy, an accountant from Phoenix, did: He joined a frequent-renter program. How does that help? Whenever a rental company points to its contract, Kennedy can use his status as leverage. The subtle threat is that if the charges don't vanish, he will. "I get discounts of between 5% and 20% on rentals, too," he adds.

In an effort to squeeze more money out of you, car rental companies adopted an unfortunate strategy of nickel-and-diming customers beginning in the late 1990s. And until now, we had little choice but to accept their inflated bills and shrug them off. But with two car rental companies now in bankruptcy, the winds have shifted in your favor.

That's not to say you should try to gouge a car rental company next time you rent from it. During these difficult times for the travel industry, we shouldn't see this as an opportunity for payback — the business is suffering enough already.

I'm just suggesting that when a car rental company quotes you a rate, it should be expected to actually bill you what it said it would. No more.

And if it doesn't, then it deserves to lose your business — if not go out of business.

Christopher Elliott is a travel writer based in Key Largo, Fla. This column also appeared on Microsoft's bCentral site.