OT: Rental Car Prices ?
Papi_Chulo
Miami, FL (or the nearest big-booty club)
Anyone rented a car recently?
At the beginning of April I needed to make about a 2-hour-trip (to get my Pfizer shot) and was thinking of renting a car since the CVT in my jalopy sometimes acts up and I didn't wanna take any chances (my CVT on the freeway will sometimes rev-up by itself by about 1000 or 1500 RPMs - it usually comes right back down but will do this intermittently although it seems it will settle down once the jalopy has been cruising for a bit; this started happening about a year ago and my jalopy is out of warranty and I don't wanna invest in expensive repairs.).
Anyway - I couldn't find any available rental-cars around the beginning of April I assume b/c of Spring Break and it being South FL. I just took a look again out of curiosity for a late April rental and the rentals seem to be 2x what I used to pay in the past - I even looked out of curiosity for prices in a different city and state for a late April rental and that too was 2x what I normal pay.
Anyone has seen or had issues with recent rental-car prices? I wonder how this is related to Covid and if it's just a sudden surge in demand although the 2nd city I looked for a late-April rental was Newark, NJ which I would not assume is a "destination spot" where there'd be surge in demand and again in the past prices were half in Newark.
At the beginning of April I needed to make about a 2-hour-trip (to get my Pfizer shot) and was thinking of renting a car since the CVT in my jalopy sometimes acts up and I didn't wanna take any chances (my CVT on the freeway will sometimes rev-up by itself by about 1000 or 1500 RPMs - it usually comes right back down but will do this intermittently although it seems it will settle down once the jalopy has been cruising for a bit; this started happening about a year ago and my jalopy is out of warranty and I don't wanna invest in expensive repairs.).
Anyway - I couldn't find any available rental-cars around the beginning of April I assume b/c of Spring Break and it being South FL. I just took a look again out of curiosity for a late April rental and the rentals seem to be 2x what I used to pay in the past - I even looked out of curiosity for prices in a different city and state for a late April rental and that too was 2x what I normal pay.
Anyone has seen or had issues with recent rental-car prices? I wonder how this is related to Covid and if it's just a sudden surge in demand although the 2nd city I looked for a late-April rental was Newark, NJ which I would not assume is a "destination spot" where there'd be surge in demand and again in the past prices were half in Newark.
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28 comments
I'm immune from price fluctuations because of company rates. It's a perk I use for personal rentals as well.
I've noticed Uber and Lyft rides going up.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/25/business/…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegley…
You may want to wait it out a week or so. Miami is a school break travel destination and we are in the midst of April school vacation for some of the northern states.
Or maybe it's time for a new car? I like you tend to buy them new and then milk them for as many good years as I can get, but when a car is so bad that you don't trust it for a 2 hour trip, then it's time to consider a change.
Also, didn't Hertz go bankrupt?
My son is going away with 6 total guys to an island. 4 made their reservations one day and got a very attractive air fare. The other two waited one day and the airfare had tripled.
Worse Uber drivers ever = Las Vegas.
There are millions on unemployment yet there are millions of jobs unfilled - businesses can't compete against the government
Yeah – once a car starts giving me issues I get into something else vs putting too-much $$$ into repairs – the car I have now is 6 ys/o which is not that old “for me”, but it only has about 70k-miles and hasn’t given me any issues other than the CVT acting-up every-now-and-then but it’s not something constant; and I don’t usually drive long-distances so it hasn’t been an issue – I may take a road-trip maybe 1x or 2x a year (some years none) and I figured I would just rent a car for now for those infrequent road-trips.
So I’ll probably stick w/ the jalopy for now until it does start leaving me on the side of the road which it never has – I def like not having a car-payment to deal with – right now the only reason I’d get into a new car would be to have something nicer ($40 to $50k range); getting into an affordable new car doesn’t feel like money-well-spent to me if I'm just getting into it for it being new and affordable vs something I like; for that I just stay w/ what I have – cars have gotten very expensive and add to that the very-high insurance-rates in Miami and owning a new/nice car gets pretty-pricey (I currently don’t have collision-insurance on my jalopy which brings down my insurance rates, but when I moved backhome from Dallas to Miami, my full-coverage at the time doubled) – and a decent used-car now-a-days is costly AF (if you can find one that doesn’t have a shit-ton of miles) – post the 2008 recession people started buying more used-cars and it drove up the used-car-market – and the other day I heard on the radio someone saying that used-car-prices have increased by about 25% in the last year alone – and a lot of people have been buying new cars lately w/ all the government $$$ they are getting (and there are some people that have put off paying rent b/c of the Covid law and have used that $$$ to buy a new cars) – and there seems to be new-inventory issues w/ car-makers not being able to get the materials to build all the cars they want (chips shortages, etc) which like will drive up car-prices.
I can “afford” a fairly-nice new car but if I get back into clubbing like I did in past years then it’d be hard for me to be paying for a nice new car, clubbing like I used to club (a good amount); and also be able to save-and-invest – at least one of the 3 is gonna suffer and in the last few years I’ve preferred to not put $$$ into a nice-car and have that $$$ free for other things.
My next vehicle I buy will be an electric one, because I think I want to avoid filling up at the gas station when all I will need to do is plug it in. After figuring the cost of maintenance and oil changes the lifetime savings of not only money, but time will add up to make EV cars a more economical choice.
What keeps me from an EV is that I don’t have an enclosed garage to put one of those special chargers at home that fast charger; I also would have access to only one car (it’s not as if I could borrow another family member’s car if mine was charging); and there aren’t that many charging-stations near my Cuban-hood.
The city of Miami in Florida, United States, has 499 public charging station ports (Level 2 and Level 3) within 15km. 83% of the ports are level 2 charging ports and 30% of the ports offer free charges for your electric car.