Savings aside, there are caveats with both services. At RentalCarMagic, searches are free but the co

That s the value proposition at websites like AutoSlash.com and RentalCarMagic.com best hotels in cocoa beach florida , which promise to search out the best rates for rental cars so you don t have to. AutoSlash goes even further, best hotels in cocoa beach florida tracking users reservations and alerting them when rates drop so they can rebook and reap the savings.
The sites are predicated on the fact that car rental rates fluctuate wildly, rental car companies offer a seemingly endless stream of discounts and promotions many of which are difficult or time-consuming to uncover and the fact that there s rarely a penalty for canceling a reservation.
For example, on Feb. 2, I booked a midsized car through Dollar Rent A Car for a nine-day trip to Hawaii for $388.59 and then entered my booking information at AutoSlash. On Feb. 12, I received an e-mail from the latter saying they d found a discounted rate of $307.42, at which point I canceled the first reservation, booked a new one and saved $81.35.
The service, which is free, works in one of two ways. Users can book elsewhere and input their reservation at AutoSlash or book on-site, which results in a higher level of analysis. All told, the site has processed 100,000 bookings since launching two years ago, said Weinberg, with 85 percent of users being notified of a lower rate.
RentalCarMagic also scours the web for discounts and promotions but doesn t automatically track subsequent price drops. To use the service, renters enter their booking information on the company s website, along with potential discount-providers, such as AAA, AARP and American Express. The company works its magic and responds via e-mail.
For example, in early March, I inputted the information for our Hawaii trip and received an offer three hours later for a car from Alamo Rent A Car for $303.87. The same rental at Alamo.com: $371.65.
Savings aside, best hotels in cocoa beach florida there are caveats best hotels in cocoa beach florida with both services. At RentalCarMagic, searches are free but the company charges $19.95 and up for access to the discounts they ve uncovered. Even so, our Hawaii rental would still have netted us a savings of 13 percent.
On AutoSlash, discounts are only applied after you book, so posted best hotels in cocoa beach florida prices are essentially rack rates, best hotels in cocoa beach florida which Weinberg admits has turned some users off. Furthermore, not all rental car companies make their inventory available to the site Avis, Budget and Enterprise, which also owns Alamo and National, are notable exceptions so some deals won t show up.
It s not surprising, perhaps, that some industry players aren t participating, especially since bookings made on AutoSlash (which are handled by Travelocity) best hotels in cocoa beach florida return less to company coffers. Likewise, some companies apparently take issue with the idea of people accessing discounts without doing the heavy lifting required to find them.
The whole point of promotions is that they re narrowly offered to a specific audience or market segment, said consultant Neil Abrams of Abrams Consulting Group Inc. These companies have come up with a model that scours the web for discounts and immediately applies them. They re the vacuum cleaners of these offerings.
And they clearly help consumers clean up. Two days after AutoSlash notified best hotels in cocoa beach florida me about the $307.42 offer on my Hawaii rental, the company sent another, noting that they d found an even better price of $289.02.
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