car hire USA

Hi,
i was just wondering is it better to prebook car hire in USA or is is better to just walk in and book it there,i always have prebooked before,but have been told a better rate can be got by waiting to book til i get there,i will be doing a one way rental from San Francisco for about 10 days.
any ideas would be welcomed.

Pat

In my experience pre-booking is usually better

However if booking directly with the hire companies (e.g. not via Auto Europe etc.) you can normally get reasonable rates and there's no advance payment / cancellation penalty .. so you can always see if you get a better rate when you arrive!

I would say that pre-booking is the way to go.. I recently booked a car in San Fran for 11 days and it cost about 270euro. I also prebooked through priceline in Upstate new york last year and it was a very good deal. On the same trip, I tried to book a car for a day in Boston (on the day), but the prices were really expensive ( in the region of 100 dollars a day)

One way rental could be expensive. I would shop around. You can always call the car hire places there, but have always found it cheaper to hire in advance.

Def pre book www. usrentacar.co.uk have frequent sales on US car hire also try carhire3000.co.uk and carsabroad.com

You can definitely be stung if you wait till you are there. A friend who works in the car rental sector tells me that there are 'walk in rates' that can be a lot more expensive than pre-booking.

Having said that, I also heard that you may get lucky and find a small local hire company with incredibly low walk in rental rates. Overall, I would say that the walk in hire can be a bit of a gamble.