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Comment by pxeboot | Hacker News Reader

I find high undisclosed taxes on rental cars and hidden resort fees at hotels much more unfriendly to consumers than airline fees.

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Absolutely! When buying an air ticket, at least on the checkout page I see the final price I'm paying.

On the contrary, when renting a car a couple of years ago I had following situation - I booked a car and paid, then I arrived at the airport, and at the counter I was told:

* 5EUR/day more because I'm below 25yo

* 5EUR/day more because it's a diesel car ("so I don't want diesel" - "but we have only diesel")

* gas policy is full/empty, so I have to pay for gas in advance; I check the contract and it says I have to pay "market rate", I check online and market rate is 20% less than what they want me to pay, I say this is not market rate, they say it includes surcharge for fueling the car.

In the end I didn't have much choice and rented the car, but the experience was much worse than buying air tickets.

Fees in general for rental cars are awful. In the US at least there are also all sorts of taxes, concession fees, high hourly fees if you return at a bit later time than you picked up, etc. It can all add up to 30% or more of the total price so you need to make sure you're comparing apples-to-apples when you make a reservation.

On the plus side, most rental cars don't charge for canceling or missing a reservation, returning early, or just not showing up--so there's that.

If you reserve (just book, no need to pay in advance) a popular class of vehicle in advance the pick-up location will often not have one available so you get a free upgrade to whichever superior class they do have ready. Also, look for 'off-airport' locations because these do not assess an airport surcharge fee. Off-airport locations are even less likely to have popular classes in stock. Doesn't matter if you just flew in, (remove your airline luggage tags, try not to be obvious) take a taxi to the location. It will frequently be cheaper this way. Off-airport locations are often near airports.

As an American living in Europe, I found that some US insurers will issue a 'driver only' policy that covers you while driving rentals in the USA on your European license. I'm paying $24/year for mine which has generous limits and is much cheaper than the coverage rental agencies offer.

Also slightly unrelated but don't dare call British Airways to enquire about changing your flight or you will not be able to check in online and you will get the worst seats when you show up for your flight. This is true even if you make no changes, your booking is put in to some kind of frozen state and the phone agents are unable to reverse this. You must visit the BA desk at an airport in person to have this corrected. Bizarre, but this was confirmed by multiple people at BA who I spoke to after having it happen to me.

Off-airport rentals are a good tip to save some money. I confess I very rarely do it because it's one more hassle after a long flight. The one thing you need to be careful of is hours as off-airport rental companies often operate on more conventional business hours.

IME it was better getting a rental car with the more reputable players(Hertz, Avis, Europcar), I once was looking at rentalcars.com and the smaller companies had significantly cheaper prices which inclined me to go with them but they were full of gotchas and when you reached the place(bullshit key fees, security deposit going up to 10x higher than the security deposit of the big ones).

As for gas policy whenever I rented a car it was full/full.

Hostels too, I've seen some charge for(and not fully disclosed at the time of booking):

- Bed sheets

- key deposits

- shower access

- locker usage

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