Why are car rentals advertised for $6 a day but the cheapest is always $77?

[rmay635703]

Looking at a week long rental pickup and drop off in Wausau.

Everybody and their brother within 50 miles of here is ungodly expensive.

I used to get $99 specials all the time ~4 day.

WTF happened? All my vehicles are continuously getting smacked by animals or requiring wheel bearings every 3000 miles so I actually am stuck needing a rental if I want to do anything but it appears to not matter when I pickup or from whom.

Is there anything that isn’t more than a house and property tax payment?

[freebeard]

You used to be able to buy a [$100] car on one coast, drive to the other and sell it.

[redpoint5]

For local needs, borrowing a friend or family members car is the easiest and cheapest solution.

For travel transportation, the best rates are had with corporate accounts. Failing that, perhaps one of the car sharing networks (Turo for example) beats the corporate pricing?

My long term solution is to recommend every household to have at least 2 vehicles.

[Piotrsko]

Big to-do this AM on my NPR (or was it RteS? BBC?) site whining about googles new released version of search killing/burying anything not to the advantage of google. Apparently if you drill down a page or five, the results become more relevant.

Alternatively, back when there was Avis, hertz, budget you could obtain loss rates because they were drumming up activity. And unsurprisingly, they would come back empty of fuel which was refueled at 3-4 times the local rate.

No more competitive agencies, no need for enticing rates. When I just got back from Europe, there was only one car rental desk but with hertz and budget uniforms. A lot of uber and lyft cars in the pickup atea, however.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

For local needs, borrowing a friend or family members car is the easiest and cheapest solution.

For travel transportation, the best rates are had with corporate accounts. Failing that, perhaps one of the car sharing networks (Turo for example) beats the corporate pricing?

My long term solution is to recommend every household to have at least 2 vehicles.

No local family and I own 3 cars but all broke down in different ways at the same time, been a race of which gets parts first, been driving on bad wheel bearings for weeks waiting for them.

[freebeard]

I'm down to three too; a rolling chassis, one sidelined for an engine refresh, and the weekly driver that needs tie rod ends, a muffler, and electrical work.

OTOH I need to walk more for my health.

[Ecky]

This is, to some degree, a problem local to the USA. In NZ, as long as I don't try to book it same-day, I can get a rental car for around $20-30nz ($12-18us) per day.

I also keep a ride sharing app on my phone. I can pick a Tesla up on most street corners and drive it for US 55 cents per minute, or US$12 per hour, with no need to recharge or refuel, and they're city parking cost exempt which means it's often cheaper to drive one and dump it somewhere than to take my own car and park it. Or I can just take the bus. Or walk.

I have no idea why things have become so expensive in the US. It isn't just car rentals. New Zealand once had a reputation for being expensive, but I had sticker shock at just how cheap most everything was when I moved here, while the bottom 90% of society have higher per-capita income.

[freebeard]

I have no idea why things have become so expensive in the US.

Just one of many things I wonder about.

[Piotrsko]

How do you mean expensive? Usa is generally cheaper than EU for some things, very hard to compare since a liter and a quart aren't the same size and you have to compute the euro cost to dollars. Add zloty with decimals to the mix and your brain shuts down.

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

How do you mean expensive? Usa is generally cheaper than EU for some things, very hard to compare since a liter and a quart aren't the same size and you have to compute the euro cost to dollars. Add zloty with decimals to the mix and your brain shuts down.

My cost of living, after currency conversion and unit conversion, is somewhere in the ballpark of "half" on this remote island in the south Pacific.

Healthcare - 0
Car insurance - $8us per month
Utility rates - around 25% lower than in a coal burning Midwest state
Actual utility usage - considerably lower, due to mild climate
Food - lower, but varies
Transportation - Drastically lower, despite fuel prices, due to structural/social factors
Rent - lower in the capital city than in Detroit suburbs

Etc etc