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Are Costco car rental discounts reallly that good

derb

derb

TUG Member
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Location
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I rent cars, 2 weeks at a time, 6 times a year.

Are the Costco discounts on car rentals so much
better than Hotwire, Priceline etc., that it would
pay to join Costco just for this one benefit.
 
I have found them to be better in most cases. If you travel with a spouse, an additional benefit is that the spouse can also drive the rental car for no additional fee.

You can check prices without being a member. Go to Costco.com, click on travel and luggage, then rental cars. Put in the dates you are interested in checking and the pickup location.

Good luck.
 
I've found that they really are. But just like all rental agencies you have to keep checking right up til you pick up the car. You can cancel and rebook as often as you want to with no penalty. I have an intermediate car for 21 days in San Francisco in May reserved. Costco price with all fees and taxes was $860.63 everyone else was $1000.00 or higher for the same car.

Suzanne
 
Even if you can't beat Priceline or Hotwire, you can probably get pretty close to matching them with Costco. Costco rates are cancellable right up to the day of pickup. So IMO that beats Priceline or Hotwire which require payment upfront.
 
I look nearly daily for car rentals using Hotwire and Kayak, the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal, and the Costco website.

Costco has almost always comes in lowest ultimately. Even for Hawaii, when everyone says Costco cannot beat their rate with Discount Hawaii Car Rental. I have always found a better price with Costco.

The Chase Ultimate Rewards Portal has been the lowest for our Maui trip next month, March, at $311 for two weeks, all taxes and fees included. I haven't been able to find anything that low yet on Costco, but chances are good Costco will beat it. I just hope they beat it before my Chase reservation is a done deal. I have 48 hours before the rental time to cancel with Chase. We will see.
 
I think they are.
 
I must be the exception. When I was a Costco member, its price was always higher than what I booked with a discount code at National Car. I checked periodically; don't have time to do so daily. I won't use opaque sites since I've had billing problems with several companies and will never use them again.
 
My experience is about 50-50. I always check Costco, but about half the time I find better rates on carrentals.com or hotwire.com. If the rates are close, I will go w/ Costco for the free second driver.

Kurt
 
If you look far out ahead of time, book it, and don't recheck, then Costco is generally more expensive. But the Costco prices generally drop like a rock starting about 4-6 weeks before the rental period. Sometimes the drop continues until the week before, when the price can really be outstanding. So if you want to use Costco, you have to be willing to continue to track the prices until shortly before you travel. But IME, if you do so, you can frequently (not always by a long shot) get unbeatable prices.

It's not uncommon for me to cancel and rebook 20-30 times before locking into the lowest rate.

-Bob
 
I check at least once a week. My comment about the 50-50 still stands, in my experience.

Kurt
 
Probably 9 times out of 10 Costco has the lowest rate...but that's after checking regularly as others mentioned. That said, Discount Hawiian Car Rental has the best price for a trip we're taking next month with two four day rentals, each on a different island plus another week on Maui.

I'm waiting to see if Costco drops and beat DHCR but if they don't I still have a pretty terrific rate
 
Besides being the cheapest rentals 4 out of 5 times we go to Costco for other reasons while on vacation.

We eat most of our meals inside the condo. I love their chicken pot pie, deep dish pizzas and some of their other prepared dishes. We drink alcohol and their beer selection and prices are good.

If you go to Hawaii, their gas is always the cheapest by quite a bit.

Maybe you should get a friend or family member that already has a Costco membership to get a $100 gift card for you and try them out on one of your trips.
 
See my post regarding rates for car rentals. I started out at $860.00 for 3 week rental out of San Francisco in May. Checking every day my rate is now down to $481.23 for intermediate car from Enterprise.

Costco is definitely worth it.

Suzanne
 
derb said:
I rent cars, 2 weeks at a time, 6 times a year.

Are the Costco discounts on car rentals so much
better than Hotwire, Priceline etc., that it would
pay to join Costco just for this one benefit.
Click to expand...

Yes.

Blues said:
If you look far out ahead of time, book it, and don't recheck, then Costco is generally more expensive. But the Costco prices generally drop like a rock starting about 4-6 weeks before the rental period.
-Bob
Click to expand...

+1
 
derb said:
I rent cars, 2 weeks at a time, 6 times a year.

Are the Costco discounts on car rentals so much
better than Hotwire, Priceline etc., that it would
pay to join Costco just for this one benefit.
Click to expand...

It depends. For places like LAS, I can typically find better rates elsewhere. But for Hawaii and other places, Costco typically can't be beat.

I wouldn't join just for the one benefit. The discount code is widely available and no one ever checks for Costco membership -- not once in all the years I've used it. Since there is no insurance benefit (which if you got into an accident, you would not receive the benefits since technically not a member), I'd be fine with just using the code and booking online. Obviously, YMMV.

Lucky for me, I go to Costco all the time so the car rental benefit is one more thing worth the price of membership.

-ryan
 
Blues said:
If you look far out ahead of time, book it, and don't recheck, then Costco is generally more expensive. But the Costco prices generally drop like a rock starting about 4-6 weeks before the rental period. Sometimes the drop continues until the week before, when the price can really be outstanding. So if you want to use Costco, you have to be willing to continue to track the prices until shortly before you travel. But IME, if you do so, you can frequently (not always by a long shot) get unbeatable prices.

It's not uncommon for me to cancel and rebook 20-30 times before locking into the lowest rate.

-Bob
Click to expand...
Wow! That is watching the rates closely! But if it works....
 
Last edited:
Generally, Costco rates ARE that good & the benefit of the free second driver is very useful to us.

Still, when you know where to look you sometimes can beat them. Hawaiian Discount Car Rental beat Costco handley a few months ago when I started firming up our trip to the Islands next month. 3 islands over a 15 day period & three car rentals.

Today I checked and Costco rates are competitve within a few $ of HDCR, and on HNL they are actually $25 less. I rebooked HNL. :D

With rental cars it's useful to check back regularly in case rates drop.
 
Just checked the rental prices for the week we're going. I had reserved a compact car, but found that the rental prices for that car had gone up. However the price for a standard car is now $90 less than the one I had reserved. This is the 3rd reservation I've had for the same vacation. With checking over time, I've saved $130!
 
We're going to be in Florida mid-May. I originally booked a full size through Avis using a corporate rate. The Costco rate was much higher. Then I checked a few days ago and the Costco rate had fallen to half of the Avis rate! Pays to keep checking.
 
It definitely pays to keep checking. I once got a reduced rate from what I had reserved on the morning I was going to pick up the car.
 
Costco rate for next month in Maui is now reasonable. I was able to save ~$40 for my rental and change from a compact to a mid-size, compared to one of the other discount hawaii rental sites often mentioned on TUG. I'll keep checking over the next few weeks and won't be surprised to find additional savings, similar to past rentals via Costco.

Also, Costco rentals for Kauai in October are very inexpensive right now. Ironically, the Full-size is less than standard, and both are substantially less than mid-size, for the week I reserved. $186 after taxes/fees for a full-size for one week.
 
Last edited:
I got a full size on Kauai for two weeks all in for $407. I got that a few weeks ago and before that it was over $800. I'll keep checking and I thought is was weird too that the smaller cars were much more expensive.
 
Maui Apr 12 days for $401

Looks like prices just started dropping the past 7 days...
 
Last edited:
Blues said:
If you look far out ahead of time, book it, and don't recheck, then Costco is generally more expensive. But the Costco prices generally drop like a rock starting about 4-6 weeks before the rental period. Sometimes the drop continues until the week before, when the price can really be outstanding. So if you want to use Costco, you have to be willing to continue to track the prices until shortly before you travel. But IME, if you do so, you can frequently (not always by a long shot) get unbeatable prices.

It's not uncommon for me to cancel and rebook 20-30 times before locking into the lowest rate.

-Bob
Click to expand...

20 - 30 times seems alot. How much are you saving per hour spent searching?
 
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