How to Save Money on Rental Cars Using Autoslash.com

I agree, rental cars are a tricky game. One of my personal favorite ways to redeem for one day or short rentals is with my Discover Cashback bonus. Enterprise and Alamo give you a $40 rental certificate for just $20 CB Bonus money. Other than that, true to the form of autoslash, you have to shop, shop, shop – and do so early! Example: I have an upcoming trip to Kodiak, Alaska. My Small SUV, Subaru Forester or similar is just about $700 for a week rental if I booked today with Avis. Fortunately, I shopped early hoping to pull an “Autoslash” on the price, but as it turns out, that $438 weekly rental is seeming to be as good as it’s gonna get! Autoslash sounds very interesting. I will have to check it out. Thanks, Brian!

do they also apply coupon/promo codes and so forth? Lots of good mileage bonuses out there. I just got 3000 US bonus miles with Avis for a 3 day rental at TPA at cost about $120 total. But you nee dto use the right codes when you make your reservation.

We’re happy we were able to save you some money Brian!

@Glenn–We absolutely do apply coupons and discount codes. We automatically figure out which ones yield the best rates, saving you the hassle of searching for and testing them. What we do not do however is try to maximize mileage and other point bonuses. We are laser focused on getting our customer the absolutely lowest possible rate. Bonuses can sometimes be worthwhile, but that’s not our focus.

Our rentals are definitely eligible, but there’s a very good chance that our system will automatically override the promo code you entered if it finds another that will yield a lower rate. It’s not really point/mileage aware.

On the other hand, if you email us and let us know that you don’t want your promo codes changed, we do have a way of blocking any changes and will just track the rental going forward for price drops (which can be significant).

Lastly, without getting into a holy war on this topic, I want to point out that if given the choice between say triple points somewhere and saving 50% on a rental (which happens often with us), there’s probably more benefit to the money savings. If it’s only say $10 off, then it might be a different story. Definitely shades of gray here.

@Alan Did you book with us or just look at the rate shown in the initial search? The rate shown in the initial search are basically rack rates (we’re not allowed to show discounted rates up-front). The discounting comes after booking.

We are 100% free, so there really isn’t anything to close. Make a booking elsewhere at the best rate you can and then make one with us and see which one in the end wins out. You can change or cancel at any time without penalty.

Lastly, if you are AAA then let us know (eventually we’ll automate this preference). We can often use that to your advantage and may even be able to get you lower than your current rate booked through AAA by creative use of coupon codes in addition to the AAA CDP. Email us the details at supportautoslash.com with your current rental details, and we’ll be happy to see what we can do for you.

How are they doing this? Are they a travel agency/agent and booking rebooking under them or do they protect the original booking path?

Yeah, I’ve found and LEARNED of course that one has to go through the whole booking process with autoslash in order for them to try and work their magic. This WASN’T the way the system worked when it first launched (If I recall correctly from sometime last year) where they did display some discounts on the offer page. Anyhow, go through the process, click submit and wait a bit for a better rate to come through.

I find them match or beat the best rate I can find about 60% of the time, not 50 and now 75%. There are often varied AAA rates, which I don’t think anyone will properly impliment (an Illinois rate in CA or DC compared to a AAA CA rate in IL will often be different rates with different companies especially hertz) so I think a scrappy renter armed with all the tricks can OFTEN but not always source an as good or better deal.

I’ve had good luck with Autoslash before. They got me the best rate on a 3 day rental in SLC for a midsize for $48…far cheaper than anyone’s online rates.

@autoslash: Do we simply email you our AAA info and can you add this to the profile or does this need to be done for every reservation…and can we send you info on reservations currently in the pipeline?

Thanks for the useful information! I just tried it. The Hertz rack rate for 3 days including tax at Canada was approx $288. After I went thruogh the whole booking steps, I got an email confirmation and the cost became $277 which is slightly lower than $288. For some reasons, I also did not see the message “We review each reservation daily to see if we can find additional savings for our customers. ” Did I miss some steps here? Would appreciate your thoughts!

AutoSlash, Yes, I just got another email. Now it went down from 277 CAD to 221 CAD. This is COOL! I booked the car rental a while ago and got 236 CAD at that time. Now it is lower than what I got a while ago and might be getting lower in the future… Thanks!

@ron Very smart move checking off airport locations, since as you’ve found you can save a bundle. I do want to point out for everyone though that the reverse can also be true (airport being cheaper than off-airport), so to ensure maximum savings, check both.

As for Enterprise, you’re correct. Because of the deep discounts we offer, not all rental companies have chosen to offer their rentals via our service. We are in talks with the holdouts though and hope to offer all of the major companies eventually.

@Robert – If you search rentalcars.com and decide to book one of the companies we support (Hertz, Dollar, Thrifty, etc.) then consider completing the reservation with us. With rentalcars.com, you’re stuck at the initial price, while as you mentioned, with AutoSlash, your rate only goes down from there.

You’d be surprised just how competitive Hertz can be after discount codes are creatively applied. Some basic CDP’s can cut your rate in half or close to it, and then there are coupons that take $50 off a weekly rental on top of that. The next time you rent, email us your best deal to support(at)autoslash.com and we’ll see if we can beat it!

@tivoboy Interesting comments, but I’m not sure I fully understand everything that you said. Happy to discuss further off-line if you like. Feel free to email us at support(at)autoslash.com and I’ll get back to you.

Regarding your bio-asset comment, it’s actually a binary-bio (sort of like Terminator). We have many automated systems in place that help to determine the optimal discounts, but we still do oversee things with a human touch to ensure the best possible savings for our users. Every day though the automated systems are getting better and better, so I definitely do foresee a day very soon where there will be no human involvement at all.

Off-airport rental locations are not allowed to shuttle to/from the airport in general. You’d need to grab a cab or other transportation to get there on your own. A site like TaxiWiz.com can help to estimate the costs.

In your specific case though, I highly doubt you’re going to do any better off-site. Your base rate is only $128.46 for a 9-day intermediate rental. That is very low and a super deal. Even with the drop fee of $80, it’s among the lowest I’ve seen. I did a quick check and found nothing off-airport that even came remotely close.

Trust me, you’re already getting a great deal on a one-way rental, and if rates drop further, then you’ll be all set to take advantage of it.

Drop fees in general are somewhat variable. I’d say that 50% of the one-way rentals have them and 50% do not. Keep in mind that the rental companies have fleets that are somewhat fluid. Sometimes they have more in a certain location than another. This can be a good thing if they at close to or at capacity.

On the other hand, if they have too few cars in a location to meet upcoming demand, it’s in their best interest to incent people (by lowering rates and/or eliminating drop fees) in order to get more cars in. There’s really no way to know this up-front, so you just have to price it out and see what comes back.

In a similar vein, you can have a premium car that is renting for less than an economy car. We see this all the time. It’s all supply and demand–too many reservations for an economy car and not enough for a premium car.

The cool thing about AutoSlash is that we’ll alert you to these situations automatically and give you the option to upgrade for less. Some folks jump at this, but others would prefer to be in a more economical car to save money on gas. That’s why we offer the option as opposed to automatically switching people.

We don’t consider downgrades right now. It would be too cumbersome with the system we currently have in place. Eventually we’ll have user profiles where you’ll be able to specify at a granular level what car class/company you are willing to take under what conditions, but we’re not there yet.

I used Autoslash because of this post and they’ve saved me nearly 50% off a painful one day LAX rental that started just over $100 for an ECONOMY car. It’s actually gone down 3 times in the last week and I’m fine with the current rate. Anything else is gravy. I’ve told everyone about how awesome the service is.

Thanks for the tip Points Guy.

I too like renting with Hertz due to my #1 club and no need to go to the counter to pick up my car.
Recently I booked a Hertz car in FLL for 3 days + 2 hrs at over $100/day for $444 total (due to one way rental).
I too thought I would try AutoSlash. First quote for same rental was for $347 – already a $100 saving. Next day I got a new quote for $246 (same car, etc). That’s a $200 savings!
If all works well, as I expect it will, I am sold.

Hi Brian, I just went to autoslash and they posted the message below. If I understand it correctly they will no longer have availability for Dollar, Thrifty and Hertz to be booked through their site?

To our loyal customers:
We regret to inform you that Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, Inc. – the corporate parent of Dollar and Thrifty, and Hertz Corporation which also owns Advantage – took action to prevent our customers from booking rentals from these brands through AutoSlash.
This action came on the heels of this February 18, 2012 New York Times article, which encouraged the renting public to “make a statement” by “booking through AutoSlash and patronizing Hertz, Thrifty and the other companies that play along.” We’re disappointed that these companies have now chosen to reverse course and adopt this anti-consumer position, after having participated in this site since its launch in mid-2010. Apparently, with more customers booking reservations through our service, they felt they could no longer support our consumer-friendly model of automatically finding the best discount codes and re-booking when rates drop.
AutoSlash will not waver in our objective to help people get a great deal on their rentals. We have exciting product plans on the horizon to make our site even more useful to you, and we look forward to sharing details with you when the time comes. If you’d like to stay up-to-date on new developments, please enter your email address below.