I just came across a little article on CNN on Car Rental Tips which makes a super point which could save you major money.

The moral: If you’re searching for the best deal, no matter which car rental agency you’re looking at, your job isn’t done simply because you’ve made a reservation.

Most of the time when I travel for vacation, I make reservations and then forget about them. Air travel is too expensive to change because of penalties and fees. When I pick lodging I tend to either pick independently owned smaller B&B’s which tend to have less generous cancellation policies (and usually I am married to the place I want to stay) or buy a deal online. So, I rarely change these either except in cases of insane weather (once while we were stuck in Bryce Canyon in a long stretch of freezing rain), emergencies, or general weridness (a story in itself when we stayed in part of Olympic National Park). So, I am usually on autopilot and do the same with my rental car reservations. According to CNN article this could be costing me a pretty penny.

In the article they give the example of saving over $100 for the same trip, same itinerary simply by checking back at a later date. I don’t know about you but that is a lot of dough to save for about 5 minutes of effort (checking back on the prices).

Another way to save money is to decline the additional insurance offered by the rental car company. But — Don’t decline unless you know you’re covered another way! Before traveling, check with your auto insurance company and credit cards to find out if and how thoroughly you are covered when renting a car. The Insurance Information Institute has some great guidelines on this topic as well as actually defining what those different types of insurance coverages the car rental agent tries to sell you really mean.

I also went in search of enlightenment around the nitty gritty details of renting cars. Goodness knows waiting until you’re at the counter is the last place you’ll get real answers. It is usually extremely busy and hectic and you’re forced to make decisions on the spot. I found a site called Free Travel Tips that offer some great information on renting cars. I learned a few new things from this site, particularly around the additional driver clause. One of my biggest pet peeves is when I go to rent a car, get to the counter, and they have a fee for adding an additional driver. Some companies do, some don’t. I have no problem listing the driver and their information because that makes sense, but to charge me another $7-25/day for another driver when they are already charging me an arm and a leg for some compact car makes me fume. On more than one occasion we have declined it even though we knew we’d both be driving the car. Well, according to this site we would have been up a creek without a paddle had we been pulled over or had an accident. Words like breach of contract, detained, and arrested don’t sound like words you want to use on a vacation. I guess we are even luckier than we thought that we didn’t hit the gaggle of deer in La Sal, Utah! Next time I’ll have to do additional research and make sure the company I choose doesn’t charge an additional fee so I can ensure we’re on the up and up.

Now you, too can be a savvier rental car customer.