Car Rental

Car Rental
I just thought I’d share with you some surprising numbers regarding our trip to Canberra last month. A few weeks before the trip, I started researching car rental rates. I quickly discovered that the big problem with renting over Easter weekend is that most of the car rental places are closed on both Good Friday and Easter Monday. So we were going to have to rent from Thursday to Tuesday, pay for the extra days, and deal with the hassle of getting the car there and back on normal work days. Most of them were also requiring us to pay for a full week’s rental (as a sort of holiday weekend surcharge). Bayswater quoted us $340; Discount Car Rental was $375; Hertz was over $400. Then I had a brainwave. GoGet! While we normally use it for short trips, they do have a day rate of $68 which includes 150km for free. We could pick it up and drop it off whenever we liked. So for Friday to Monday, the four days would cost us $280 and include 600km (which was basically the distance to Canberra and back). Additional kilometers are billed at 20c each, so we worked out that we could drive 325km in Canberra for the same amount we’d have paid Bayswater. Also, GoGet pays for gas (and Bayswater doesn’t). So all in all, we figured we’d come out ahead. We booked the GoGet car and used it for the trip, and today I’ve just gotten my April statement that includes the final tally. Total cost: $320.20. Brilliant! The whole scheme worked perfectly. We saved money ($20 plus gas); we saved time (we could pick-up and drop-off on the public holiday); and we saved hassle (we didn’t have to worry about parking on the street and driving the car back on a workday). GoGet FTW!