It used to be that you knew which providers you’d be using on an upcoming trip. For example, you had an airline, rental car and hotel bookings in advance, or at least before you left home for the airport, and chances were excellent those were the ones you’d be using.
That’s no longer the case.
- The airline could delay or cancel your flight, leaving you to book on another carrier
- Rental car companies can run out of cars
- You may unexpectedly need to stay overnight due to a flight cancellation.
I’ve already written about how we’re booking secondary, refundable airline tickets for when we really need to get to our destination on time. I also know what to do if I’m stranded overnight at the airport.
The one area I overlooked is rental cars. If you’ve reserved a car in the past year, you know that the prices are insane. I’ve never seen them at this level and I’m thankful that my corporate rate has kept my rentals at a reasonable price, even finding better rates than Autoslash.
However, Autoslash has found a cheaper price only a few hours before our rental. The last time, I needed to rebook a rental car for Sharon while she was on a flight to San Francisco. We were able to save some money but it meant Sharon needed to go through the ordeal of standing in line at the rental counter.
This could have been a one-off occurrence, but while we were on a Southwest flight to Dallas, I received an email from Autoslash that they found a less expensive rental. Saving money on our rental car made the $8 I paid Southwest for Wi-Fi worth it.
Our original Hertz one-way rental did not include mileage but the booking from Dollar/Thrifty (both had identical rates) was less expensive and included unlimited mileage. I followed the Autoslash link to Priceline (I’m willing to use a referral link as payment to Autoslash for their service) and booked through Thrifty.
There was one issue. I didn’t have a frequent renter account with Thrifty. I tried to sign up with Blue Chip Rewards while on the plane but the website kept giving me an error.
I was able to look up my rental and fill out my information (driver’s license, credit card, etc.) in advance but taking out my wallet and filling out the form on my iPad while sitting on a Southwest flight was not optimal.
I wished I already had a Thrifty Blue Chip account but since I had no plans to rent from them, it seemed like a waste of time to fill out all of the info with no upcoming rental.
Take my advice. Make sure to have accounts with all of the major airlines, hotels and rental car companies. With travel being as messed up as it is, and no signs of things getting better, taking 5 minutes to create an account can save you the hassle of trying to enroll while on the in-flight Wi-Fi service.
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