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Rental Car Companies Finally Forced to Do Right Thing about Recalled Cars

There’s been an on-and-off battle over recalled rental cars for quite some time, one which has been in and out of the new for at least the last few years. Basically, car rental companies haven’t been doing their best when it comes to pulling recalled cars off the lot or sending them in for the necessary repairs. Obviously this isn’t a good idea, and that’s especially the case when it results in injuries, accidents, or other bad stuff.

Obviously there’s certain rules and regulations that have to be followed, but the basic premise is that rental car companies need to yank recalled cars off their lots as soon as possible. The new legislation requires the companies to stop renting out vehicles no later than 24 hours after getting the official recall notice, but the time period stretches up to 48 hours if the recall affects more than 5,000 cars within their garage.

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Travel Deals / Rental Cars / Cars / Florida Travel / Road Trips / Hertz / Avis / Alamo / National Car Rental / → All Tags

The Mega Rental Car Deal Returns: Cheap Rentals Out of Florida

Each and every year the rental car companies call upon intrepid road trippers to help them out, as they have just too many darn cars hanging out in the Sunshine State. Start planning where to go and when to travel, as one-way rental cars heading out of Florida can be had for a steal.

Hertz is leading the rental car convoy this year, and they’re doing it with the $5 per day deal. There’s really no catch, as all you have to do is promise to rent a car in Florida and return it to another state. Book now and do your thing on the open road between April 24 and June 12, and you should be all set. The code you need to use is "DRV5,” but if you click right here you should land right at the booking page.

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Why Chancing a Rental Car 'Wild Card' Can Be an Awesome Deal

We have a little rental car tip to share, which could come very in handy this summer seeing as how we bet many of you are planning road trips to enjoy warm weather. If you price things out and if you notice Thrifty Cars is a viable option, check out their special "Wild Car(d)" rate, which is typically only a couple dollars more per day than a compact car.

What choosing the Wild Car does, is leave it up to the agent to assign your type of vehicle. Last weekend in San Diego, we went with the Wild Car. It guarantees a compact car or larger and although we spied full-size cars on the lot, we ended up tooling around Southern California in a foggy green, brand new SUV—a Kia Soul with satellite XM radio for a total of $67 for three days.

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Check That Rental Car for Recalls Before Driving Away

Yet again, this has been a year stuffed with auto recalls, a notable one being those pesky Toyotas with over-aggressive gas pedals. But now that it seems like the hysteria has died down and cars are getting fixed, we have more bad news: apparently no one has been reminding the rental car companies to bring their vehicles into the shop for a checkup.

ABC News was doing a little bit of investigative journalism, and they discovered that companies like Enterprise, National, and Alamo rent out cars under safety recalls prior to them being fixed. The car company shared this little secret during a court case in California that involved the death of two women due to a malfunctioning PT Cruiser. In one affidavit, an Enterprise manager pretty much said that if there is demand, the cars are rented out regardless of any safety issues.

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Hybrid Rental Car Prices Will Take You for a Ride

When we look to score a rental car these days, there’s pretty much only one major factor—price. Sure comfort and coolness are high on the list, but as tempting as that Michael Scott-style Sebring convertible is, we just don’t want to pay the extra $20 per day to enjoy the wind in our hair. The same is true for hybrid cars, because apparently they are fetching quite the premium.

The New York Times has been checking out hybrid rental options in the San Francisco area, and they found that the eco-friendly vehicles could be marked up between 30 and 70 percent. It’s not just one car company either, as Hertz, Alamo, and Enterprise were all guilty of green-gouging potential customers.

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The Largest Car Rental Company in the World Gets Even Bigger

We learned something very important in the wee hours this morning, when the news alert that rental car giant Hertz had purchased its rival, Dollar Rent-a-car. We learned that Dollar is definitely worth more than a dollar; in fact, Hertz paid about 1.8 billion dollars for them. That's a lot of pine tree air fresheners.

Hertz, which was already the largest car rental company in the world before buying Dollar, will not have a stronger international presence and 1,550 additional locations. This means that you will now have 9,800 location options for renting a Hertz car, but it won't necessarily bring cheaper prices. The Hertz-Dollar merger will trim millions of dollars in operating fat, but being the largest car rental company in the world has its advantages, and higher prices is one.

On the other hand, Hertz is ever-so-slowly introducing electric cars into their fold, beginning with the Nissan Leaf, and having this option is something for which we'd pay a little extra.

Related Stories:
· Hertz Agrees to Buy Rival Dollar for $1.28B and stock [NYDN]
· Rental Car news [Jaunted]

[Photo: e.t.]

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Rental Cars for $3 a Day? Yes, If You'll Drive Them Out of Florida

If you missed your flight out of Florida due to a little much fun on spring break—don’t worry—you can still get home, but you’ll have to drive. There’s too many rental cars in Florida right now, and companies like Hertz, Alamo, and Enterprise want their cars elsewhere across the country. That’s why they’re offering deals to rent cars, and return them anywhere besides The Sunshine State.

Fly into any city in Florida and plan your own road trip back to where you call home. Alamo is offering rental car rates as low as $10 a day for a mid-size or compact car, and you can keep the car for up to 21 days. Just rent between April 5 and May 21 and return the car by the end of May. Apparently Alamo is allowing a return at any location around the continental US as long as it’s outside of Florida.

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A Rental Car Road Trip on a Shoestring Budget

Jaunted editor Paul Brady is back on terra firma in the U.S. after nearly a year away in South America. So how did he get back here? By taking the ultimate road-trip. All this week, he'll be telling us just how he did it. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know.

There's something uncanny about planning a one-way road trip through the southern United States from an internet cafe in Cartagena, Colombia. But plan ahead you must, if you want to take advantage of the incredibly cheap one-way rental car deals out of Florida on offer right now.

Why the bargains? As the companies gear up for summer road trip season, they realize all their inventory is at Florida airports, dumped there by snow bunnies who drove down for sun and fun but flew back home. By offering super-cheap rides to people like me--north-bound drivers with flexible travel plans--they can easily repopulate the country with rentals.

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Thanks To TerraPass Even The Worst Rental Car Can Be Green

Some rental car companies are feeling all warm and fuzzy inside lately. A year after starting a carbon offset program through the help of their green buddy TerraPass, they’re reporting that over 175,000 customers have chipped in a couple extra bucks per rental to save the earth. We can’t remember ever being offered this service in any of our rental car adventures over the last year, but we also just may have told the person at the counter that we weren’t interested in any more fees.

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Alamo The Latest To Offer Weekend Rental Deals

Not to be outdone by Enterprise, Alamo Rent A Car is hyping $10-a-day rentals, Thursday through Monday at "most" airport locations. Unlike the competition, which only offers sweet deals at "neighborhood" locations, this steal makes it possible to fly somewhere and grab a cheap car, instead of just renting for your staycation.

Alamo has a few restrictions that we'll just rip straight from the well-written press release:

There is a four-day maximum on rentals, which range from economy to premium-size cars, based upon availability. Special weekend airport rentals begin as early as 9 am on Thursdays and require an overnight Saturday rental. Vehicles must be returned to Alamo no later than pick-up time on Monday.

Since pricing on rental cars is even more complicated than airfares, we've had a little trouble finding a straight $10-a-day deal by plugging dates and destinations into alamo.com. But we did price a four-day rental out of Denver for $90 and a four-day deal out of Seattle for $92. Rates in Miami, where it's not currently cold as all get out, were predictably higher.

Related Stories:
· Alamo Rent A Car [Official Site]
· Enterprise's Sweet Weekend Rental Deal [Jaunted]

[Photo: Walsh]