Cheap car rental deals on Hotwire

I got an e-mail from Hotwire this week that said it had car rentals as low as $8.95 per day. When I see prices that low, my blinders go up. I don’t really believe it, so I don’t read the offers. Then I remembered that I’ll be in L.A. next week and my husband will be in Vegas. We share a car and haven’t decided who will get it. So, I dug up the recent Hotwire car rental deal and, guess what, prices truly are cheap right now.

Tested: I went to Hotwire and clicked on its car rental page. I plugged in Las Vegas for Monday-Thursday (Nov. 17-20) and got rates that started at $10 per day for an economy or compact car through Thrifty or Dollar. The total price came to $51.50 including taxes. Enterprise, Alamo and Budget were just a dollar and change more per day.

If you want to rent a car in L.A. this weekend, I found rates starting at $14.95 per day, or $68 for the whole weekend Friday-Monday (Nov. 14-17).

Note: There was a comment in the sidebar that said these were Hotwire limited rates: “When rental car companies have extra cars on the lot, they use Hotwire to move them, so you get them at deeply discounted rates. We call these special rates Hotwire Limited Rates.” When I ran the Vegas rates, they listed the car companies, but when I tested the Los Angeles rental, it said that “You’re guaranteed a car from a major car-rental agency: Alamo, Avis, Budget, Enterprise, Europcar (international only), Hertz, or National. You save big: because you agree to learn the car-rental company after you book.” They tell you what the agency is immediately after you complete your registration.

Tip: You can get special promotions sent to you when you sign up for a free Hotwire account.

Contact: Hotwire

– Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times Travel & Deal blogger

[Image: hotwire.com]

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 11:43 am by Jen Leo and is filed under Business Travel, Deals, News, Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.