Alas, the era of the $19-a-day car rental is long gone. In response to Consumer Reports’s Spring 2024 member survey, 6,236 respondents who rented a car over the past 12 months said they spent an average of $86 a day including taxes and fees, which adds up to about $600 a week. That’s enough to bust a lot of vacation budgets.
Were renters satisfied with what they got for that money? It depended quite a bit on which company they rented from. CR asked members to rate their experiences in the areas of customer service, value for the money, the condition of the car, the ease (or difficulty) of picking it up, and price transparency, as well as their experience as a whole.
We then combined those scores into an overall satisfaction rating for each rental car company. (We also asked about ease of booking, returning the car, selection, and cleanliness, but did not factor those attributes into the overall satisfaction ratings.)
