How to Find Coupon Codes & Compare Car Rental Prices Online

Car rentals can be a part of your vacation budget where, with smart shopping and online comparisons, you can really save a lot of money. The car rental industry is a competitive market, especially in prime vacation destinations, so make sure you are taking advantage of all the offers available before you book your car rental. Follow these methods and you're sure to end up with the best online car rental deal. The first thing you need to do is find out what the current pricing is for a car rental during your travel dates. There are many sites that allow you to compare prices between the major car rental agencies, which is very useful in finding out if there is one particular car rental agency that runs cheaper than the rest. Let's take a quick look at the top three websites that you can use to compare car rental prices online.

Travelocity - Okay, beside the fact that the traveling gnome in their TV commercials is a hoot, Travelocity is good to use because it has an easy to understand format and table which automatically rates your car rental prices for you. Another neat feature is the ability to bundle your airfare/hotel/car rental or any combination of the three into one package price. This feature is certainly great for convenience, but it probably won't get you the best possible price on all three expenses.

Orbitz - Like Travelocity, Orbitz compares their car rental prices in a grid format. Travelocity's format is a little easier to understand, but one bonus that Orbitz offers that other car rental price comparison sites do not is a "Lowest Price Guarantee", which is pretty tempting. It requires follow through on your part, though, including continued monitoring of car rental prices, and a series of hoops to jump through to get your money back from Orbitz that seems to involve everything but training a monkey to stand on its head.

Expedia - Expedia's car rental price results were the most difficult for me to decipher, but that could be because I'm a spreadsheet person so the other sites' grid formats really appeal to me. You might find that Expedia's many ways of grouping like car rentals together to be the easiest for you to understand, so give it a look and see. Expedia also has a "Low Price Guarantee" although theirs is time sensitive and gets you an Expedia coupon good for future travel rather than actual money back.

After you've checked out each of the three major travel search sites to compare car rental prices, you should save the search results to your favorites or bookmarks so you can track the results daily. Even though I've mentioned the guaranteed pricing the above websites offer, you are not going to book your rental on any of those sites. This is just for ease of research to get a general idea of car rental prices - you can see what each car rental company offers in one fell swoop rather than visiting each individual car rental website every day.

In order to really get the best deals, you should always book direct on the car rental agency's website and use a coupon or discount code. You'll be surprised by how many codes are out there - in fact, high volume vacation areas often have pages of codes available. Some of these codes are area-specific, meaning if you have a code for a car rental in Orlando, you won't be able to use that same code for a car rental in Los Angeles. One website that lists codes for dozens of locations is www.rentalcarmomma.com. If you have no luck there, you should try Google with the search terms "coupon code" "car rental" and the name of your city destination.

Now you have your coupon codes and a general idea of what car rental prices should be for the area you'll be visiting. Armed with this information, it is time to visit the individual car rental agency websites and put those codes to good use! Remember to make note of any restrictions the coupon code may have - some have limited dates, or can only be used on certain types of vehicles, or require a full weekend rental - and make sure your choices meet all the criteria for the coupon code. If you have more than one coupon code for a single car rental agency, be sure to test them all since there seems to be no real key to figuring out which ones have the best deals.

Here's the best part about this method: if you find a better deal at a later date, you can cancel your initial reservation with absolutely no penalty. Unlike airline tickets or hotels, car rental agencies do not penalize you for canceling or changing a reservation, with one exception: some offer steeply discounted deals that are pre-pay only and cannot be cancelled or changed - so think twice before taking one of those offers.

One last tip is if you have booked a nonrefundable car rental (or any part of your trip is nonrefundable), don't torture yourself by continuing to search for better deals. Accept that you got a great deal and make sure to enjoy your vacation!