I recently received a great deal on a car rental out of SFO. \u00a0This is based on a decent amount of research that I did to ensure I got the best deal possible. \u00a0For this particular\u00a0trip to San Francisco, I needed a car rental so I did the regular checking of rates on Priceline and Hotwire, as well as a few other sites. \u00a0I found the best deal on Expedia.ca (not Expedia.com). \u00a0For a rental car from SFO, the price was only an amazing $11 per day. \u00a0“What a deal”, so I thought. \u00a0As the saying goes, buyer beware.<\/p>\n
First, I got to SFO quite late because of a connecting flight that was delayed in Seattle. \u00a0I arrived at SFO around 11 p.m., took the AirTrain to the car rental building, where I discovered my first disappointment using\u00a0Payless Car Rental — that Payless is offsite and you have to wait for their shuttle. \u00a0I called for the shuttle only to learn that their office closed at 10:00 p.m., one hour earlier.<\/p>\n
Stuck in San Francisco without a car, I walked up to Thrifty Car Rental and explained the situation to them. \u00a0They were happy to rent me a car but it was going to cost me $50 for the night. \u00a0What was I to do? \u00a0I was tired and I paid the $50 so I could get to my hotel and the meeting early the next day.<\/p>\n
The next day, I returned my Thrifty Rental Car and called the shuttle to pick up my prepaid Payless Rental car which I would use for the remaining duration of my trip. \u00a0In total, this took about 2 hours of my time as had to return the Thrifty car, call the shuttle, wait for the shuttle, take the shuttle (about 10 minutes away from the airport), and do the Payless paperwork. \u00a0What a complete waste of time.<\/p>\n
Payless was nice enough to honor my reservation “this time only”, implying that they’re doing me a favor by giving me my car rental even though I did not show up to pick it up the previous day. \u00a0Remember, I prepaid for this rental. \u00a0They had my money so the car was mine, as far as I’m concerned, whether I picked it up on time or not.<\/p>\n
Then came the extra charges and upselling. \u00a0I got forced to buy insurance even though my personal vehicle insurance covers rentals, simply because I did not have sufficient documentation to show proof. \u00a0I also got charged $10 per day for an extra driver.<\/p>\n
In the end, I don’t think I saved very much money going with Payless Car Rental. \u00a0It caused me a lot of time and frustration. \u00a0Lesson learned: \u00a0Don’t always go with the cheapest. \u00a0More specifically, at least in the SFO airport, avoid Payless or any other off-site car rental agencies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently received a great deal on a car rental out of SFO. \u00a0This is based on a decent amount of research that I did to ensure I got the best deal possible. \u00a0For this particular\u00a0trip to San Francisco, I needed a car rental so I did the regular checking of rates on Priceline and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-better-bidding-for-travel","category-travel-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoteldealsrevealed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoteldealsrevealed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoteldealsrevealed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoteldealsrevealed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoteldealsrevealed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoteldealsrevealed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1497,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoteldealsrevealed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions\/1497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoteldealsrevealed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoteldealsrevealed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoteldealsrevealed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoteldealsrevealed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}