Did You Know That Car Renting Is Considered An Art, Not A Skill ?
posted in General Information |Car renting is an art, not a skill. People seem to think “yeah I’ve done it before, I can do it again, better.” The truth is that very few car renters truly leverage every trick out there to get the best possible deal. Our goal today is to change that.Take for instance, upgrades. When you rent a specific car class for pickup on a specific day, in reality unless its a specialty car, you are just renting a car, not the specific car class. Let me explain.Car Rental Agencies spend a great deal of money studying the human mind and how it works. They want to be able to predict what people will do on any given day so that they may best utilize their investment (cars). One thing has shown in these studies is that people are always looking for a bargain, or a perceived bargain. They have it down to a science. The problem is, not all of their agents are as in tune with the game plan as the computers.First, some basics. Car rental agents work on commission. Yes, they get a hourly wage, but they supplement it with sales, or more importantly, upsells, of products that the car agency sells. This metric, or measurement category, is relayed in the form of a number, Dollars per rental day. To break that down, if you were renting a car for 10 days and they upsold you from a compact car to a full size car for 10 dollars per day, that agent’s “dollars per day” upgrade number would be $10.00. Each agent is required to maintain a specific dollar amount to avoid sanctions, but usually that number is set low. Usually they driven by greed. The more upgrades, the more money they get. If they reach certain benchmarks, their payouts hit “multipliers”, if an agent averages$5 per rental day, instead of paying out a commission at normal level, the company may pay them 1,25x the normal commission level.Now that you know how how they get paid, its time to learn how to turn this to your advantage. It is advantageous to upgrade as many people as possible to higher class cars on most occasions. Since smaller cars are easier to rent, agents want to keep those available for another type of commission payout, the “walk-up customer.”. More on that later.Most agents will try and offer an upgrade at anywhere from 10-25 dollars per day for an upgrade. Upgrades could come from any car class to any other car class above. You could go from a subcompact to a full size, a full size to a van, a mid size to a convertible, it really doesn’t matter. They will often quote the same price. Pay attention to the market. If you really wanted that convertible, but they were renting at 75.00 per day online when you booked your subcompact at $40 per day, taking a convertible for $10 a day upgrade is a GREAT deal. At least it appears on paper.What MOST people don’t know is that 10-25 dollar upgrade number is pure fantasy. As far as the rental car company is concerned, operationally it would be better to get that convertible off the lot rather than let it sit there waiting for the right price customer to come by. Each and every car sitting on the lot is costing the rental car company at least 15 dollars a day to sit idle. Since the car you are currently reserved for is likely an easy sell to other people (and often overbooked intentionally to take advantage of this fact), they are willing to take ANY dollar amount for that car.Sure, there are agents whom are literally too money hungry to give up the car at low ball rates, but it is indeed possible. This works especially well at the end of the month when agents are just barely below the next threshold for their multiplier. Giving up a little on their average revenue per rental day in exchange for sheer volume could push them over the top and double, or triple their monthly commission.Oh, and one more thing, any agent, and I mean any agent, can give you any car on the lot, pretty much without any risk of penalty. Sweet talking agents, bribing them with food (even a well placed gratuity) can get you into a much costlier vehicle on the cheap, especially if you are a regular renter at that facility. Some agents have lists of who’s naughty and who’s nice. If your on their “nice list”, I see the hottest cars for cheap in your future.