Renting a car can be a complicated and expensive process.
Not only are there many options to consider, but there are so many affiliations and discounts
out there that it’s hard to make a comparison to find the best price.
Hey, how’s it going everyone?
It’s Ernest from Trip Astute.
In this video, I’m going to share my personal experience of using a service called Autoslash,
and how I was able to save about $250 on our car rental for our upcoming trip.
As some of you know, we’re planning to take a honeymoon road trip to visit seven national
parks in September.
A big expense on that trip is our car rental.
We decided to book through Avis earlier this year since we’ve had a solid experience
with them in the past and we get a discount with them since we have a Chase Sapphire Reserve.
Since we’ll be potentially driving off-road at a few national parks, we opted for an intermediate
size SUV.
I usually go for the cheapest car available, but this time, we thought we would get a car
to cover all our bases.
My booking through Avis ended up being $1185 for about 15 days.
I ended up prepaying it and thinking we were done.
That is until I heard about a site called AutoSlash and decided to give it a try.
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I first heard of AutoSlash a while back when researching a video on rental car tips.
I didn’t think much of it.
I just figured that I could probably find the best rate by searching online on my own.
Then I saw other bloggers talking about it, and I still was a bit skeptical.
But I decided to check it out.
So this video is going to give you a real example of how we used the service, and how
I was wrong to dismiss it as just another discount travel search engine.
AutoSlash is a website that performs three specific functions.
It gives you quotes for new car rentals.
It can track an existing car rental and see whether it can find a better deal.
The site also has a ton of coupons available, though I have to admit that I don’t think
the coupons are as valuable since you can have AutoSlash search for a car rental for
you based on all the available coupons and discounts.
They even have a message at the top of the page recommending that users request a quote
rather than trying to apply a coupon manually on their own.
Since I already had a booking, I decided to Track a Rental for price drops.
I selected the rental company used, which was Avis, and entered the confirmation number.
From there, AutoSlash asked for the pick-up date and also the reserved price.
I was then asked to confirm the name on the reservation.
Next, it asked to select groups and association where I am a member.
This includes associations, credit cards, loyalty programs, and warehouse clubs.
Once I made my selection, it asked for my email address.
And that was it.
A confirmation appeared, and I thought I would see if I would get any better rates in my
inbox.
About 15 minutes later, I got an email.
Surprisingly, AutoSlash found a lot of cheaper prices.
In fact, the prices started at $513, which was less than half the price that I was paying
for my Avis reservation.
You’ll see that most of the lower price rentals were with less premium rental car
companies.
For example, the lowest price was at Fox, which has a lot of questionable reviews online.
I probably wouldn’t care as much about the quality of the car, except that we’ll be
driving it for two weeks.
And it’s a honeymoon.
So, I decided to use Enterprise, which is one of the larger and more established rental
car companies.
It definitely wasn’t the cheapest.
But at $882, I was still saving around $300 from my original booking.
Also, since we’ll be driving a lot of miles, we wanted to have a reservation that allowed
us to have an additional driver so that Fiona and I could split up the driving.
Interestingly enough, you’ll see that AutoSlash accounted for my Costco membership when identifying
this deal.
The booking mentioned that I would need to show proof of membership when picking up the
car.
Also, when I moved forward to complete the booking, AutoSlash directed me to Priceline.
I don’t know if they are owned by them or just affiliated, but it was a bit strange
at first.
But I went ahead and proceeded with the booking.
I will caveat that I ended up only saving a little bit less than $300.
Since there was a $50 cancellation fee associated with our pre-paid Avis reservation, we ended
up saving about $253.
Still, that’s an extra $253 that can be put toward something else.
And AutoSlash did practically all the work of finding the cheaper rental.
I would say that I am pretty happy with the results.
Needless to say, I definitely recommend AutoSlash the next time you are looking for a car rental.
And if you’ve already booked a rental car for any upcoming trip, I recommend having
the service track your current rental to see if there might be a better deal available.
I know that I often don’t have a lot of time to spend searching through every portal
and discount code to save money.
Having AutoSlash do it was very convenient and easy.
I’m assuming that AutoSlash makes money by redirecting customers to bookings through
Priceline.
There wasn’t any visible fee tacked onto my reservation for using the service.
I think it’s a fair service, and I know I’ll be using it for all my future rental
car reservations.
As always, I wanted to share some additional tips for those of you thinking of using the
service.
1.
Always enroll in the car rental loyalty program: Before completing a booking for any rental
car, you’ll want to join their loyalty program.
It’s a very simple and straightforward process and is free.
Doing so will help speed up the process of picking up your car.
In some cases, you can pick-up your car without even stopping at the rental counter.
And if you do have to go to the counter, it often means a separate one for members that
is less crowded.
I also recommend downloading the rental car company’s app before your trip and logging
into your account.
This can help speed up the process as well, especially if keeps you for having to stop
at the rental car company counter.
2.
Unsubscribe from your notification: Once you book your new reservation, you’ll see still
receive notifications from AutoSlash about discounted bookings.
AutoSlash doesn’t automatically cancel your tracked reservation, so you’ll need to do
so by clicking on the link the email notification, or by deleting the tracked reservation on
the website.
3.
Rates can change: Between the time that you receive your notification and the time you
check it online, the rates may change.
Though I wouldn’t expect it to change drastically.
It’s just something to be aware of when using the service.
4.
Research the rental car company: In my case, I didn’t opt for the cheapest rental car
company.
Some of you might think I’m crazy for not opting for the cheapest one, but I’ve had
some bad experiences in the past with some of the budget rental car companies.
It’s all about doing the research and seeing how much risk you want to take.
For me, personally, I’m willing to pay a bit more in order to get better service and
potentially a better functioning and maintained car.
5.
Check out our video on rental car tips: We did an entire a video a while back on tips
for renting a car.
Make sure you check out that video for more tips and ways to save.
For example, we discuss how to save money by opting out of the insurance offered by
the rental car company.
This is especially relevant to those of you that have premium travel credit cards that
offer primary car rental insurance, like the Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve card.
So make sure you check out that video for more details.
Have you used AutoSlash before?
If so, were you able to save money?
Please share your experience below.
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Until next time, travel safe and travel smart.