May be stating the obvious, but Priceline s name your own price feature is a great way to book a car

I just got back from my trip to Orlando, where I tried the new car rental website AutoSlash.com to book, and previously wrote an introductory summary of their features. To briefly recap, the website takes advantage of a unique feature of car rental reservations to continuously check for lower prices air travel times over time and re-book you whenever there is a price drop.
Here is the price history of my one week rental of a mid-size car in April 2011 from Orlando International Airport (MCO). I later realized it included Good Friday and Easter weekend, which I think increased the demand of cars.
As you can see, there was a flurry of activity in the beginning, nothing for a long time, and then finally one last price drop at the end. This is only a theory, air travel times but I think that the folks behind Autoslash do a manual price search right after your rental reservation is first made, and again a week or so before your actual air travel times rental date. They are probably really good at finding the best price, perhaps they know some manual tricks that their automated scripts can t replicate. Or, this is just a result of how the rental agencies vary their prices over time.
Regardless, I was really happy with my experience, and will use them again in the future. They found a better price than I could have found, with really zero effort on my part. Many of these rental agencies are clones of each other anyway. I picked up my car from Dollar with no issues with my special coupon code, and drove away in a huge Ford Crown Victoria with 9 miles on the odometer since that s all they had left. I declined all additional insurance coverages from them, and returned it with no problems. This last part is more of a testament to that specific Dollar franchise, but it increases my confidence with places that aren t Avis or Hertz.
Many times prices will either drop or increase in the week leading up to the rental. It s mostly based on supply and demand. If lots of vehicles are available, companies will undercut each other and AutoSlash customers will benefit. If vehicles are scarce, prices will rise, and price drops will be less likely.
One customer may get one or two price drops a week for 8 weeks, while another will have their rate cut in half the day before they pickup their rental. It s hard to predict, but the bottom line is that with AutoSlash you can always rest easy that you re getting the best deal possible.
autoslash right now has it as total price $126 dollars and hotwire has it as $115 dollars. Not a huge difference, but I guess I was expecting autoslash to match hotwire on my first search and not cost more.
We discount air travel times the rate after you book. The rates you initially see are un-discounted. Once you book, you will likely get an email from us within a few hours that we ve reduced your rate by applying a coupon or discount code. We re not allowed to show discounted rates in the initial search. air travel times Other services (like Hotwire) can do this because they don t tell you the name of the company until after you ve paid in full for the rental.
Hotwire (and Priceline) charges you the full price of the rental air travel times up front, and they don t allow any cancellations or changes. They are what s known as an opaque service . If your plans change, you re SOL. AutoSlash charges nothing, and you can change or cancel at anytime without air travel times penalty.
The bottom line is that you should go ahead and book and see what happens to your price. Your initially booked rate is basically just a starting point. Essentially the rate you book at is the highest price you ll pay, and it will likely go down from there.
I don t think you need a manual search air travel times near booking to explain more activity at the front end followed by a lul. If you assume prices fluctuate up and down (which I think is perfectly reasonable), and you don t HAPPEN to book at a cyclical bottom, air travel times you d expect several bookings in a row as prices move towards one of those bottoms.
Once that bottom is hit, and you re locked in, you won t see another change untill (or more accurately UNLESS) another bottom is LOWER than the bottom at which you locked in. I m not surprised at all to see the pattern in your graph it makes total sense, even as a 100% automated system, applied consitently from day 1 to day 40+.
When we first launched last year, we used to automatically apply coupons up-front and show discounted rates before the actual booking, but the rental companies weren t happy with us to say the least, so we had to alter our business model for better or worse.
I made a reservation at a high un-discounted rate; then it immediately found me a much lower rate (presumably non-publishable); then a few days later it found me a slightly lower rate (presumably due to the agencies bidding).
@Autoslash Thanks for commenting, and that point about the first quote not being discounted at all explains a lot. That s too bad, because I bet some people move on after seeing your initial prices are the same as at other travel sites. I m just happy they still let you do this model of applying coupons air travel times for us.
May be stating the obvious, but Priceline s name your own price feature is a great way to book a car for significantly less than what you can find anywhere else. It allows you to choose everything but the company (date, pick up time, size/class of car, etc.) only down side is that you pre pay, so no refunds if your trip is canceled. We ve gotten mid size cars for as little as $13/day in SFO and great prices in Hawaii air travel times and Denver.
Priceline is great until you go to pick up your car and the rental agency tells you that no cars are available, even though you already paid for it. Then trying to get a refund from them is like making a diamond out of coal. Autoslash worked great for me the two times I used them.
I am very impressed with Autoslash. I just booked a 3-day rental for Milwaukee a week from now. The listed rate after taxes was $52, ($13/day) which seemed air travel times awesome, I booked it. Today I received an email offering me a lower rate of $35 from hertz an instant $17 saved. I replied to the email and I now have a reservation for the new price. I checked priceline after originally booking and their listed rate was $52 the name your own price, wanted me to bid $14/day for a great chance of getting my price, and at $10/day the total was still $49.
im very glad to see the positive reviews of autoslash.com. i currently have a reservation pending for january (currently early december) and the emails notifying of a price drop just keep coming! undiscounted was $260 and my latest email states the rate is now $149! i have not done anything air travel times to assist with the discounts except to cancel my original reservation with dollar and rebook (the exact same reservation details) with autoslash.com directly. if nothing else, the discounts will pay for the fuel!
I had already booked with Budget on my own but then I read about autoslash in a NY Times article so I thought I d give it a try and registered my booking with Autoslash. Didn t expect it to help much as I was booking a car at a relatively air travel times small airport in Canada Victoria, BC not alot of competition I thought. But I just received an email today that they could reduce the price from $170 to $124. So I decided to signup. One concern was the following air travel times stmt:
Hi Gary. Thanks for giving AutoSlash a shot. Sometimes it s not possible air travel times to get the actual price breakdown directly from the rental company for a particular air travel times rental, but you can view it on their site directly. Just take your confirmation number, and go to rental company s site and plug it in along with your last name, and you ll see that the rate we quoted includes all taxes and fees.
Just keep in mind that if you need to make changes to your reservation, do it on AutoSlash as opposed to the rental company. We will track your rate each day, and if rates drop, we ll automatically re-book you to lock in the savings. If you modify it at the rental company s site, things get out of sync and our price tracking doesn t work anymore.
Autoslash is my best friend! I use it every year for our annual trip to Vegas. The price keeps dropping dropping soon it s almost 1/2 of the original price. I ve told a great many friends about this site now they re fans just like me!
I bookmarked this when you posted and finally used it. I had been able to find prices air travel times on Kayak for a 3 day SUV rental for $147 with Enterprise. AutoSlash was initially $198 but within hours was $165, both with Hertz. I ll keep seeing if they can beat that, but I booked with Enterprise directly also since AutoSlash does not seem to see that price for me.
I have a car rented with autoslash however I have been finding deals cheaper myself online, I m still 17 days out before I leave so I am hoping autoslash will come up with a better deal as it gets closer to my departure.
We go to Las Vegas 4 times a year for a week and rent car. Have ended up using Advantage, not always the very cheapest, but the easiest to deal with because so many of them, even the high rate companies, can be so snotty to deal with.
@Naoyuki We are still servicing our customers and helping them find deals on their rentals. air travel times Just book your rental anywhere you like, and then come to AutoSlash.com and click on the tab labeled Track a rental you ve booked elsewhere . Our system them analyzes your rental and we ll send you offers if we find a better deal elsewhere.
Sorry for the difficulty Jay. Due to the aggressive air travel times pricing we ve gotten people in the past, most of the major rental companies have blocked us from showing their inventory. There s a link posted on our site, but you might have overlooked it. Please email us at supportautoslash.com with your needs, and we ll be happy to help you find the best deal possible.
Note that we re hard at work on a new version of the site that should address the current shortcomings, but for the time being, email is the best way for us to help you. Thanks for your understanding.
AARP had an article air travel times on AutoSlash.com, so I thought I wou