carrentalinsider.com

So you need to Rent A Car, but you’ve been told that you are not old enough to rent. My friend said you need to be 25 years old. But I really need to rent a car! So what do you do?

For the most part the guaranteed rental allowable age nationwide is 25 years old. Car Rental Companies get away with this sort of “age discrimination” because there is a clearly an established business “border” in the insurance industry. Based on submitted claims, the troublesome high risk driving apparently gets worked out of our system by age 25. While for some this is truly false, the greater majority of the driving world seems to adhere to these averages. As a result, they simply refuse to do business with people under the age of 25.

Starting about 10-15 years ago, Car Rental Agencies began to realize that they were restricting the business. If they wanted to grow the business and develop some loyalty, they needed to start younger. Someone who couldn’t rent a car at their age suddenly gets told “yes we will take you,” that kind of support leads to greater brand loyalty. Remember that word….Brand Loyalty.

So nowadays, most rental car companies will allow rentals to those who are 21-24 years of age. These agencies end up charging an “underage fee” or some sort of tariff that is usually assessed daily. This fee is usually around 20-30 dollars a day. To find out what the age requirements your destination has, simply call the toll free number for each company and ask about your destination. Also, you can hit the Internet check out other companies. Some smaller companies allow renters under the age of 21 for a special fee and 21-24 at normal rates. Also, some cities, like New York City, have specific laws allowing car rentals to anyone 18 and over.

Priceline.com, Hotwire.com and other car rental discounters offer another way for underage renters to obtain cars. These services are prepaid and actually have a way of declaring your age before you purchase the car rental days. As part of the process, they ask to declare if any of the drivers are “between 21-24 years of age”. It will be more expensive than those who are 25 or older for the same rental days, but it will allow you to rent, declare age, and save some money in the process.

A third way to rent cars when your underage is to check and see if your company has a discount code with a particular rental car company. Some companies offer underage rentals (as young as 18) if they are employees of specific companies while on company trips (and even while on personal vacation). A fantastic example of such a discount code is U.S. Military discount codes. Some rental companies rent to anyone in the Armed Forces age 18 or older. Typically, the major national companies will rent to active duty military personnel who are on orders to travel to that city/location for official business including relocating to a city.

So as you can see, there are many ways to approach this problem, but nowadays it’s simply easy to find a company to rent to you if you are at least 21 years of age. It then becomes a question of cost, not “if”.