For my particular dates and location, the site told me it had found 218 coupons, 113 membership-spec

On last week's Top 10 Tips for Saving on Car Rentals luxury cars for rent , one of the commenters suggested checking out a site called Zalyn that aggregates discount coupons for all the major (and some minor) car rental agencies sort of like Autoslash does, though Zalyn supports some agencies Autoslash does not, such as Hertz.
The site actually does a few things including collecting car rental coupons, running a coupon analyzer, and comparing the best ones for individual customers based on where and when they are renting cards, as well as whatever other possible discounts they might be eligible for based on memberships in clubs like AAA and Costco.
I decided to put the site to the test for an upcoming rental in Colorado. I needed to pick up a car at Denver International Airport next weekend for Friday-Monday, so I ran my dates and times through Zalyn and found coupons (some of them stackable) at the various car rental agencies. Zalyn pulled up coupons at Hertz, luxury cars for rent Avis, Alamo, Budget, Dollar, National, Thrifty and more.
For my particular dates and location, the site told me it had found 218 coupons, 113 membership-specific coupons, 20 that weren't luxury cars for rent applicable at my pickup location and 37 the should work for my specific dates.
Zalyn actually pulled up two stackable coupons for Hertz. When I clicked on "Use This Coupon," I was automatically redirected to Hertz.com with both the Promotional Coupon (PC) and Discount/CDP/Club luxury cars for rent Code discounts already slotted into the appropriate boxes and my same dates and times automatically registered. All I had to do was hit the search button.
First, though, I went directly to Avis's site to see what a rental would cost me and found that I could get a Compact for $50.39 a day and a total of $205.41 luxury cars for rent for all three days including taxes and fees.
Much more valuable, however, was finding luxury cars for rent a centralized clearinghouse for car rental coupon and discount codes. I definitely plan on using Zalyn for future rentals. Has anyone else used the site? What was your experience? Any other tips out there for reducing car rental costs?
I ll have to check this one out. This was really the objective for some of the legacy booking agencies, we had created some spreadsheet and scripts to do similar, but it was pretty cumbersome. Let the savings begin!
@Jason: We recently conducted a study comparing rental rates across a few travel websites for the major rental agencies to see how they stack up. We checked the rates at the top 10 airports on Expedia, Priceline, Kayak and Zalyn for a weekly rental(7 days), a weekend rental(3 days) a weekday rental (2 days) booked 2-3 weeks in advance.
I think the site sucks. You have to sign up, which means getting a bunch of junk mail from them. If you simply click the coupon link nothing happens after you input the information. Why bother to have those fields? I must be missing something if you can find deals without signing up.
I m looking for a car for Chicago July 9-12 (Midway Airport). The lowest I ve found is $58/day for a compact/economy. Every website from Expedia, Hotwire, etc is exactly the same price. I m going to try Priceline closer to the date.
1. You do NOT need to signup to use Zalyn.com. Signup is optional and is required only if you re a member of certain groups that provide member-only discounts luxury cars for rent (e.g. AAA, AARP, etc). By signing up and specifying your memberships, you help us find relevant member-only coupons that apply to you.
3. To find coupons for your trip, please enter your trip details and hit the Search button. This will bring up the coupons that apply to your trip. Click on the coupon description link to see the coupon details. Hit the Use this coupon button and you will be sent to the vendor s website to complete your booking.
I tried Chicago, IL with my dates 3 times and nothing happened. Closed the browser and started luxury cars for rent new each time, still nothing happened when I clicked on SEARCH. That s why I figured I must have to sign up first.
The way I found the site most useful was to enter trip information in a typical travel site AND Zalyn at the same time. I could then glance quickly luxury cars for rent at both sites to see which coupon codes were worth trying. No need to bother trying the 10% coupon on the rental company that is more than double everybody else s cost.
I take the least expensive company/companies from the travel luxury cars for rent site, then click through from Zalyn to see the total cost. The most time consuming part for me is determining which car rental companies allow an additional driver for free, and under what circumstances (membership? to what?)
The technique you mentioned is the best way to find the cheapest vendor + coupon combination. It may not have been very clear, but we do have a screen(that pops up right after you hit search) where you can enter the daily rates offered by the vendors. We calculate the sub-total (excl. taxes) using the daily rate, your trip duration and the coupon to determine which vendor + coupon combination works the best.
Entering the rates is entirely optional and you can choose to use the default rate for the calculation instead. As you figured out, the most accurate way to find the best vendor + coupon combination is by factoring the daily rate into the calculation.
luxury cars for rent We would love to eliminate the need to manually key-in the daily rates and are working on figuring out a solution. We are also looking into augmenting member coupons with additional luxury cars for rent member benefits (additional driver, free gps, underage fee waived, etc.) Thanks luxury cars for rent for bringing this up.
However, if you do have status through a credit card, sometimes it s cheaper to use that than Zalyn s service. Even by stacking together the promotions from the website, comparing to Amex s Platinum discount, a Chevy Malibu or similar was $10 cheaper at the Charleston luxury cars for rent airport than going through Zalyn ($53.97 vs. $64) over 3 days (Friday June 22nd noon through Sunday June 24th at 2p).
Tried it for my week long trip to Denver luxury cars for rent at the end of the month. Found a great deal from Budget for literally half the regular price, down to $185 instead of $352. I usually luxury cars for rent find the best deals on Hotwire, but it beat Hotwire too!