Need to rent a car in Maryland for 3 weeks - any advice?

[Anonymous]

Hi all! We're a Foreign Service family who will be in C for 3 weeks over the summer. I need to rent a car so we can get out and about. Does anyone have experience with a longer-term rental like this? Any suggestions for a reasonably-priced way to make this happen? I put it in Money and Finance because I couldn't figure out where else to post this, but if you have suggestions (or it should be moved) please share! Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Bring your own car seats/GPS. Other than that, nothing else to share. The price is going to be what it's going to be. Shop around for offers. Ask a friend if they have corporate rates.

[Anonymous]

Maybe Zipcar or one of those local hourly car rental places has a deal?

Maybe call a local dealer like Enterprise or something and see if they have specials?

Otherwise I've had good luck with Hotwire.

Maybe Uber can help you somehow?

[Anonymous]

You might look into car sharing to see if that could meet your needs. Otherwise, the car rental agencies will probably cut you a deal for a month, so you'll have to see what works out cheaper.

[Anonymous]

Avis will rent you a car for 3 weeks.

[Anonymous]

any nationwide company will rent you a car for 3 weeks. I can tell you for SURE that Hertz and Avis will not be the cheapest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Otherwise I've had good luck with Hotwire.

+1. I just got back from a trip where I used Hotwire for the rental car. I got a minivan through Hertz at about 10% below the cheapest rate I could find through Travelocity and Expedia for the basic discount no-name rental (some company I had never heard of and was only local to the area we were going). You can't control which vendor you get, but you will get a good deal. And we brought our own car seats. Also, call your auto insurance company beforehand and verify that they will cover you fully for driving a rental car. Mine confirmed and I was able to avoid the insurance fee that they try to get you to buy as an upcharge.

[Anonymous]

They'll rent to you by the week.

[Anonymous]

We're Foreign Service too. We've used Enterprise, but usually for 2 months or more rentals. We've also gotten pretty cheap rates using the government discount at Budget - there's a personal travel rate and a business travel rate depending on what orders your on. The business travel rate usually includes automatic liability insurance for something like $5.00 a day which can add up, but if you don't have US insurance, sometimes it's cheaper. If you do have US insurance for cars, then the personal travel rate should be cheaper. I've seen at least $200 or more cheaper per week using the government discount. Just need a government ID for the personal one. Order for the business one.

[Anonymous]

If you are able to rent for a week at a time, I can tell you how we went about it - far and away the cheapest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We're Foreign Service too. We've used Enterprise, but usually for 2 months or more rentals. We've also gotten pretty cheap rates using the government discount at Budget - there's a personal travel rate and a business travel rate depending on what orders your on. The business travel rate usually includes automatic liability insurance for something like $5.00 a day which can add up, but if you don't have US insurance, sometimes it's cheaper. If you do have US insurance for cars, then the personal travel rate should be cheaper. I've seen at least $200 or more cheaper per week using the government discount. Just need a government ID for the personal one. Order for the business one.

Another Foreign Service family here. Do you have US-based insurance that covers rentals in the US? We insure through Clements and the policy doesn't cover insurance for rentals, though they will reimburse some amount of insurance fees paid to rental companies in the US. Credit card covers one of the two types of insurance, but we still end up paying for the other. Would love to get a policy that fully covers US rentals, since we rent a car for extended periods every summer.

To the OP: I have sometimes found that a month rental is actually cheaper than three weeks. If possible, it helps to play around with your dates and definitely shop around to different companies. Watch out for all of the extra fees though (e.g., insurance, second driver, etc...).

[Anonymous]

A friend of mine rents out his car using this service:
https://relayrides.com/
You can rent by the week (or longer).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're Foreign Service too. We've used Enterprise, but usually for 2 months or more rentals. We've also gotten pretty cheap rates using the government discount at Budget - there's a personal travel rate and a business travel rate depending on what orders your on. The business travel rate usually includes automatic liability insurance for something like $5.00 a day which can add up, but if you don't have US insurance, sometimes it's cheaper. If you do have US insurance for cars, then the personal travel rate should be cheaper. I've seen at least $200 or more cheaper per week using the government discount. Just need a government ID for the personal one. Order for the business one.

Another Foreign Service family here. Do you have US-based insurance that covers rentals in the US? We insure through Clements and the policy doesn't cover insurance for rentals, though they will reimburse some amount of insurance fees paid to rental companies in the US. Credit card covers one of the two types of insurance, but we still end up paying for the other. Would love to get a policy that fully covers US rentals, since we rent a car for extended periods every summer.

To the OP: I have sometimes found that a month rental is actually cheaper than three weeks. If possible, it helps to play around with your dates and definitely shop around to different companies. Watch out for all of the extra fees though (e.g., insurance, second driver, etc...).

OP here, and for $25 per YEAR we have a "touring policy" through USAA which covers us on any car driven in the US which we don't own (i.e.: rentals or borrowed cars). We love this policy and use it whenever we are home for the summer (or visits).

Thanks everyone for the advice. After I posted this I realised I really needed it for 4 weeks so looking into monthly rentals now.

Out of curiosity, where are you other FS families posted? We're in Panama now and moving to New Delhi in August!

[Anonymous]

Are you a Costco member? They have really great car rental rates through costcotravel.com.

[Anonymous]

Priceline.