Rental Cars: Cheap, yet expensive

I'll need a car for the desert adventure. For once I'll have an actual legit need for an SUV instead of just for the storage space or leg room. In fact, most SUV commercials are shot at monument valley.

I did a few Google searches and popped in the dates for a midsize SUV and got alarmingly disparate quotes from each company.

Alamo: $500
Avis: $366
Enterprise: $288
Dollar.com: $300
Hertz: $279 (does not include taxes)

There is over a $200 difference for a 5 day car rental for a midsize SUV!! Why would anyone pay those rates unless it is a company rental? Granted if dollar.com was cheaper than enterprise I wouldn't take the risk with an unknown service. Do the car rental companies hope their customers would be too lazy to spend 10 minutes plugging in numbers to their competitors websites? And if so, would you want that type of client? I've decided to pick enterprise. Plus they will pick you up, can't beat it!

Some places had a GPS navigation system you can rent. It was about $50 a week for the few I saw. For that price I should just put out an extra $300 and buy my own (then I could go geocaching!) But I'm hoping someone will let me borrow one for the week.

I never knew that most (maybe all) car insurance policies that have you fully ensured covers rentals. That saves me almost $100 in added expenses, even though I still pay about $2000 a year for my policy.