If you’re looking to book a car – you can save up to 10% on cars through Booking.com with this link
I think rental cars are the last great “black hole” of rewards programs. Â While it is possible (maybe not EASY, but possible) to get free hotel nights and airline flights using miles and points, especially with lucrative credit card signup bonuses and spending, unless you’re renting cars a LOT (i.e. for business), you’re not likely to get much in the way of free car rental days. Â I find, even if you ARE renting a lot, the car rental loyalty programs leave a little something to be desired (in comparison to hotel and airline loyalty programs)
(SEE ALSO: Getting top rental car status (for free!))
What I do when I rent a car
When I rent a car, I am usually renting it for myself. Â This could be for a county counting trip, or sometimes for a conference I’m at. I will often see something like this
The Economy (or subcompact at other sites) is the cheapest, and then it goes up by a few dollars for each successive bigger size. Â Clearly, they are trying to upsell you (just like a Dairy Queen Blizzard!). Â I ALWAYS RENT THE CHEAPEST SIZE THERE IS!
Now, after that I will use Autoslash, which ranked at #2 on my list of the Top 10 miles and points tools out there.  Autoslash is great because you just plug in your existing reservation, and over the course of the next few days / weeks, they’ll constantly check to find if there’s a lower price out there.
(SEE ALSO: Using Autoslash to save a ton on your next rental car)
(SEE ALSO: Autoslash saves the day again (to the tune of $483.98))
Another great way to earn while renting vehicles, is to use credit cards that give back on car rentals. Travel cards not only usually offer 1-2x points for travel, which includes purchases on car rentals, but also offers insurance coverage for rental cars. Most American Express cards and cards like Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card offer coverage, which means you do not have to pay for any additional insurance from the rental company. You can see here how the Chase Sapphire Reserve® card saved my mom nearly $900 with its rental insurance.
Why you’re foolish if you rent a “standard” car
Why I’m saying you’re foolish if you rent a “standard” size car, or anything besides the absolute cheapest car available (usually subcompact) is because rental car companies don’t care what you book. Â They have a set amount of cars at a given time, and you “get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit” (as we always tell our kids!)
(SEE ALSO: Why does renting a car feel like such a scam?)
It has also been my experience that if you rent an economy or subcompact, they never carry any of those, and so you’re going to get a standard car anyways, or at the very least a compact or intermediate. Â So you get what you want, and, in our example above, you save $20.
I often use Avis, and at many of their airport locations, if you have Avis Preferred (which you can get for free), you bypass the line, and take whatever car you want anyways. Â So in that case, if you book anything but the cheapest category, you’re DEFINITELY just throwing away money. Â Several of the other rental car chains have similar programs.
The exceptions
Of course there are exceptions – if you’re carrying ski equipment to Lake Tahoe, you’ll probably want a SUV for all your gear.  Or if you’re traveling with a large family, you might want a minivan.  Though if you have a REALLY large family (like my family of 8), you may be better off in TWO rental cars than trying to book a van.  Read about our experiences trying to book rental transportation for our family of 8 in Why we’re a 2 (rental) car family.
Or if you’re in a situation where the DOWNSIDE of NOT getting what you want is big, like in the Tahoe ski trip example. Â If you NEED an SUV, then you better BOOK one and not just hope to get one on an upgrade. Â It’s why we ended up renting 2 cars for our recent trip – because the downside of booking a large van and them NOT having one was too high.
What about you? Â When you’re booking a rental car, what size do you book?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Explains why I always get nice cars – the lousy ones go to people who book the very cheapest!
LOL – I am not a “car guy” by any stretch of the imagination but I find very little difference between an “Economy” car and a “Standard” one, other than when they give me a standard one, my gas mileage is worse…
I think it depends on the company because I believe I have seen Standard at less than or the same as Intermediate rates.
In addition, I can understand why you may play roulette when it is only you or tow or 3 people traveling, but aren’t you playing roulette with a crew size such as yours to rent a sub-compact?
After all, with the crew in tow, not to mention all your luggage, what happens when you rent a sub-compact and they actually give you one!
Yes – you’re correct. When it was all 8 of us, we did book 2 “intermediate” cars – you can read more about that at Why we’re a 2 (rental) car family
Standards are often the cheapest rates because prices are determined by computer algorithms and inventory. I’ve seen compacts for $1500 the same week that full-sizes were $200 at the same location. But hey, no reason not to listen to the moron who wrote the article who knows for a fact it’s all about up-selling.
Or you could *read* the article, where he states to rent the cheapest car available. Which would mean renting the standard when the price is the lowest. But I know reading comprehension tests are no longer standard, and it’s a difficult concept.
Zing!
Brilliant comeback. Too many out there are quick to jump on the anonymous-internet-name-calling-wagon while being too lazy to look into what they’re actually talking about.
Agree, I always book the cheapest/smallest car (unless I’m with a group of people and definitely need something like a minivan or SUV) and more often than not am told the smallest car on the lot is actually a Standard or Intermediate. Last rental was in Roanoke where I ended up with nice Chrysler…it was easy on gas and best of all my rate remained $97 for a week’s rental (even though I only kept it for five days).
Those were the good old days! Now it’s $500per week to rent a tin can!
That is so true! We wanted to go to Phoenix and hike in surrounding places but the cheapest one week car rental is more expensive than flight tickets for two of us and only somewhat cheaper then 7 nights in hotels I looked to stop for overnights. We are budget travelers so it is hard to accept car rental prices and ruin our plan
One time I had rented a subcompact car as a one way from Fresno to Oakland (needed to reposition myself after a meeting) and they gave me a Traverse. I complained enough about the added gas cost, and after some haggling Hertz offered half a tank free, which I accepted.
Nice! I have tried to get gas or other concessions when they give me a bigger car than they need and I have NEVER gotten them to give me anything like that. Guess I wasn’t mean enough 🙂
How many pop-ups, page cover-ups, slide-in boxes do you have to have?
Anything that interrupts the reading of your site or page just keeps people from becoming so engaged that they will come back.
Just because you went to some other site that had a bunch of annoying things to keep you from reading the page… that doesn’t mean it is a smart thing for you to do.
Our company has an agreement with National, which is why I always rent from them. I think they have a decent rewards program. For starters if you book an intermediate car, you can select any car on the lot that isn’t a luxury car and pay the same amount. Our car for this weekend is definitely better than the “intermediate” I reserved. Also every year National does a 1-2 free promotion where you get a free day after only two rentals, which is great.
I agree with your article.
Some things I have found help are watching the prices on Expedia for a few days – got a car I normally pay $400 for a week for $90 out of Miami for 9 days. They have “great deals” that really are great.
Also, if you book a small car, just tip the guy at the counter a $20 and BOOM you can be in a minivan or whatever like that.
I just don’t like the “add on” charges they do and have done many posts on that whole scam – I always have to be extremely careful to read my final receipt. Those guys/girls at the counter are slick…
Jay
I nearly always just use Autoslash now – see Using Autoslash to save a ton on your next rental car and My #2 miles and points tool comes through for me AGAIN!
If you use Expedia to rent cars, then you obviously don’t care how much you pay for cars. $400 for a week? Do you seriously think that sounds like a good deal? That’s more than a month’s car payment and insurance combined. People like you are the reason people like me can get cheap rates. Do you buy their tabs for them too?
The overall message of the article, although correct fails to take into consideration some important ‘what ifs’. An economy car will save you lots of money, unless you get hit by another vehicle and get badly injured. Check out safety ratings and deaths by make and model. More fatalities for subcompacts than for mid size or full size sedans. If I were driving with my family on strange roads at highway speeds, the extra $40 might be money well spent if poor / unknown driving conditions are possible. But for city driving under 30 mph, any POS will do.
The overall message of this article is that the author has no idea what he’s talking about.
Right On Joker! Dear article author: If you really want to save money stay home and never go anywhere. Why increase the enjoyment of a trip by adding a few extra dollars to the cost of your rental car?
Agreed!
National emerald aisle and the hertz equivalent always make the standard or midsized the best option
The flip side is when you reserve an intermediate ten full days before, because of the number of people you will have on board, and then at rental get stuck with the only car on the lot – a Juke.
Try fitting four adults in one of them for a 500+ mile round trip.
The problem with Avis is just that. But I’m sure that it’s not Avis, but the indy contractor who runs the site.
What if the cost of a manual car is 50% lower than the cost of an automatic car. You can’t drive manual transmission cars (or not very well) yet you don’t want to pay the exorbitant cost of an automatic. How do you get to keep your rate and get the automatic?
No major company rents out manual cars as their cheap option. You must be high.
We often rent the cheapest car, because we care little about a rental car on vacation. It’s just a tool to get us from A to B; we never want to spend any more time than necessary in one. That said, we will upgrade if needed for space or extra people. But I find that the rental car company matters more than the car size when grading the whole experience.
Still, 90% of the time it’s a subcompact and that’s fine, because it’s almost always only two of us and we don’t travel with more than carry-ons. This year we even ended up with a stick shift, which was unexpected but fine. I have been upgraded probably about 30% of the time in the past 5 years or so, but generally due to business contracts.
Or he rents in Europe where manual transmissions are often significantly cheaper than automatic vehicles…
The guy who wrote this article is a cheapskate moron. I have rented lots of cars. They are rarely completely out of cars of the class. The guys acts like they are almost always out. This is absolute nonsense. Booking a standard car, in some circumstances, might be the best possible car type to book. All cars, from economy to full-size, are usually similarly priced. Booking a standard means if they are out of standard, they bump you up to full-size. If you book a full-size and they are out, they will NOT bump you up to premium. They’ll give you a mid-size SUV or a van (which is considered an upgrade) or bump you down and tell you to come back. There’s a huge price gap between full-size and the remaining categories. If you rent an economy and expect them to be out, they probably won’t be. But if they are, the best you’ll probably do is a compact. If they really are completely out of cars, your going to get something nobody wants (a jeep), and if you bring it back later, you’ll get nothing better than bumped up one notch. This guy doesn’t know anything about renting cars. He got a free upgrade once apparently and thinks he’s got it worked out. The way you get a free upgrade is the way I’ve done it. You drive by the rental place in the middle of the night and check the lot. If your selection lane is empty, you drive in and complain about something legitimate and minor. Rental companies don’t typically carry many standards. Intermediates and compacts are the most popular. So you can get to full-size from intermediate sometimes. Renting an economy and getting upgraded to standard, as is the subject of this article, is stupid. It pissed me off to read it. Doesn’t happen.
Thanks for your (6!) comments on the article. What I described happens to me all the time. Last time was 2 weeks ago – I rented a “manager’s special”. It was the cheapest one and booked into the compact but…. (surprise!) they were out of compacts and we were upgraded to a standard for the same price
Someone had to comment 6! times. I’m tired of seeing this pop up high every time I am going on a trip. If you rent from ma and pa’s lot in the sticks, certainly some strange things can happen. Hey, maybe your rental car is stolen. Point is, your nonsense generalized “observations” don’t apply to 99.9% of renters. A manger’s special sounds oddly like the special that a lot of companies run, where you rent a compact or higher. You’ll probably get a compact, but you don’t know what car you’ll get until you get to the lot. It’s very possible you’ll get a standard car in this situation. This is not an upgrade. You specifically reserved an unknown class, usually designated in their system as an XCAR. An XCAR is almost always cheaper than a CCAR (compact) and often cheaper than an ECAR (economy); and you can’t get less than a compact! Their algorithms and inventory determine what you get. This is your secret? Buy the compact or higher option and get a not-upgrade and pretend it’s an upgrade? You’ll get what everyone else doesn’t want–guaranteed. Reserve a standard car, which they don’t have many of, and you might get bumped up to full-size–especially if you have an issue with the car.
Looks like somebody forgot to take their pills. 🙂
That’s what I was thinking. If someone is driving past the car rental lot in the middle of the night…. someone needs help. 🙂
People should remember one big thing. According to the MasterCard insurance rules I just read, which applies to their coverage of wrecks and stuff…. their insurance is null and void on any car worth more than $50K and null and void on anything other than a plain car. If you get “upgraded” to an SUV or P/U or Coupe or sporty car, you no longer have insurance by your credit card. I’m sure Visa is the same.
I don’t rent the smallest rental car because I don’t like driving around little cars.
Im 6′ 4″, I dont rent the cheapest, because I dont want to risk being stuck in a Chevy Spark. Surprisingly a Sonic can fit me fine.
But I usually stick to midside to Fullsize, as Full size is typically the cheapest for some reason when im renting vs compacts.
I have to disagree but due to the company I use to rent. My company forces me to use Enterprise/National so I use National. With National if you pick the intermediate size or higher you get to pick the car you want from the lot (usually) and you get to pick from the Executive section if you have status, which is easy enough to earn or match. With our corporate code the National rental difference is only a few bucks usually anyway.
Oh and on large vans. Just make sure you don’t rent a true 15 passenger van. While they are nice your personal car insurance (domestically) or most credit card insurance coverage will not cover you on that vehicle due to the size class. So you’ll need to buy the optional insurance for coverage.
I think a better way to say it would be to always rent the “smallest car you’d be comfortable receiving”. For me, that’s about a standard size. I don’t want to drive a subcompact, so I won’t reserve one.
After getting a supposed “intermediate” car that was really a subcompact, and a “standard” car that didn’t even have automatic door locks, I decided to always rent a full size car or better. Often the price difference is minimal. Even with the bigger cars, you don’t always get the latest models that feature a backup camera, so we prefer Alamo because at most of their locations you choose your own car.
While in general I agree with the sentiment, you clearly didn’t recognize National’s Emerald Aisle as an exception. Avis may let you pick any car by joining Avis Preferred, not with National. Their requirement is that you must book a mid-size car to be eligible for the “Aisle.” And many of my rentals at smaller airports (like PIA where there is no aisle), the Standard is often a similar price to a mid-size. AND PIA has lots of little cars if you book a sub-compact. Always enjoy your articles, keep them coming!
Has anyone ever rented AND PAID IN ADVANCE FOR a full size SUV 4×4 and had the counter person say that there were no full size SUV 4×4’s available? I reserved and PAID FOR IN ADVANCE the vehicle that I needed because I needed this vehicle. It was not a “want”. It was needed. The girl at the counter said that they would upgrade me to a Camaro convertible. I remained calm and told her that this was totally unworkable because (1) It would not hold the number of passengers that I needed to transport. (2) This was Denver in the winter time. Anyone who has ever lived there knows that snow is a constant in the winter 65 degrees one day. 10+ inches of snow the next.I used to live in Colorado for over 30 years and prior to when I left one of my assignments was inspecting rental returns at this particular location. I knew the man that ran the entire facility. I walked upstairs and told him what was going on. He said “come with me”. He walked down to the counter and said the the girl on the counter “aren’t there any Lincoln Navigators out there”. She said yes. He asked me would that work? I said “of course”. And he turned to her and said put him in that. He asked her in whose world would a Camaro convertible be considered an upgrade? In Colorado in the winter time? I guess the point is to remain calm and do not demand. Admittedly, I had an “in” here that helped me but I believe any caring manager would have done the same thing.
Think the author of the article is simply trying to help people who are unfamiliar with the rip-off business of rental car rentals… I rent, sometimes, up to 330 days a year (yes, that’s 330 days) and one has to be a magician, genius, and con man (and I am none of the above) to navigate the various rental car companies and their programs. But there are several things to keep in mind:
1. They simply don’t care about you as a customer; you are meaningless;
2. They overpromise and underdeliver most of the time;
3. They have an overabundance of cars and on any given day you get what you rent or get an upgrade or downgrade;
4. If you know someone, it might help – especially if you rent cars frequently;
5. Their so called “Loyalty” programs are useless – they offer almost nothing and even if you are a frequent renter, they’re still pretty week (example – I stayed in the same hotel group for half of the 330 or so days I rented cars and qualified for their top level status – which I cashed in for a week of free stays; I used the same rental car company and got nada except some coupons for about $100 off per rental);
6. Bottom line – join their “loyalty” program so you can go and pick up your car and if you don’t like it, go to the “specialty” counter and haggle and negotiate (if that is worth it to you)…
Just rent from National and rent the “standard” or “Intermediate” car so you can pick what you want from the Emerald Isle or Executive section.
Rental car reward programs are mostly junk. They are about like a fast food loyalty program. A good example of this is companies like Avis that even charge you to give you airline miles as your chosen partner.