Fair Warning: The next time that you travel, you may be tempted to use Hotwire for a car rental, since their rental rates frequently are 20% less (or more) than comparable rates. My advice, after trying it once is DON'T DO IT!
We escaped with our wallet intact this time, but barely. The Hotwire contract with rental aagencies is an entirely different contract than normal.
First, you pre-pay for a specific time period. ANY alteration of that time period results in significant increase in charges.in our case, one day in Phoenix was less than $40.00 total cost including taxes. But keeping the car even one hour more would result in an added day's charge at the "special" hotwire contract rate of $63/day plus taxes.
Other unhappy facts: If they have to put gas in the car after you've used it, cost is $4.40/gallon. If the car is put out of service by an accident of any type (your fault or not) the "loss of use" charge is $400/week — even though the normal weekly rental rate is about $200.
And of course since you've prepaid, if your airline schedule gets messed up, (which they generally do, nowadays) you may not get your car at all, and the money is down the drain.
Ray
Tannersville, Pennsylvania
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