You need $15000 deposit AND know how to drive manual PLUS MORE in order to be less SCAMMED!!!
Not surprising, my experience was TERRIBLE. Let me summarize here what I did, how they tried to scam me, and my corresponding reactions:
A). I read reviews online and learned about my risks, so I booked on Expedia.com with a $6/day rate for 8 days, and I purchased an insurance from Expedia at $104. My expected total: $152.
B). Upon arriving, they said my car was ready and it was a manual car. **I said manual was fine.** (I suspect for people who doesn't know to drive manual cars, they can force them to upgrade/pay more/whatever/etc.).
C). They showed me on screen a few different packages with different insurance options, pricing from ~$300 to ~$1500 with the cheapest already doubling my rental+insurance price quoted on Expedia. I was confused, then asked them about the difference between the packages. They explained a lot and the content didn't really matter. They simply tried to fool you. They would tell you insurance was important and theirs were the only good one. They would tell you Expedia insurance was unreliable and inconvenient and basically sh*t. MOST importantly, the rental option that I picked at $6/day required special toggling so when they used left and right arrows to switch between $300 and $1500 they made you believe that the option you chose didn't exist. **I told them I ONLY want the rental options stated in my Expedia reservation.**
D). With some magic toggling on computer screen my rental options appears and they told me that they needed to put a hold of $13,333 to my credit card for this option. **I gave a call to Chase to resolve this problem and told them that my credit card could do that.**
E). They told me I needed to pay ~$140 TAX and told me this was because I used Expedia insurance, which resulted me paying ~$191 at the counter. **I agreed and got trapped by this final SCAM.** I thought this was an increase of $40 from $150, what I expected on Expedia site and for TAX it was kind of normal in US. But I realized this was highly likely another scam and they finally got me as I saw Expedia charged me $104 separately a few days later. These "TAX" that they told me was mentioned in their "acceptance_converage_xxxxxx.pdf" as:
I am adding the following insurance coverage (subject to a charge) to my rental service package:
EC, VLF, ALA, TBF, TRF
(Where VLF is Vehicle License Fee, EC is Environmental Charge, ALA is Accident Legal Advice, TBF is Tyres and Battery Fee, and TRF is Transportation Recovery Fee.)
So I believe, if you can successfully get around ALL these tricks, you may be able to get a rental car at $6-10 per day with around $100 insurance purchased from Expedia.
Regardless, if you successfully decline their insurance and uses Expedia insurance, you should see something like this in your contract:
COBERTURAS (Waivers)
Acepta: PLI
Declina: ALI, CDW, SPLDW, RSA, RSA+, EWCDW, WWI, WWI+, LDQ, PAI, SLI, THW, WCDW. read more