We used my Priceline tip last night from my list of 6 tips to save money traveling. We needed to rent a minivan for our 9 days in Canada next month. I researched prices at all of the major companies using Sidestep.com, and then figured out which company was the lowest - that was Budget. Their price per day, not including tax, was $35.

We went to Priceline and put in our airport location (Detroit) and dates, flight times, etc, and selected a minivan. We put in our price per day as $20. Priceline will add taxes and fees to this, so don’t include those in your price per day. Our initial bid was rejected, but we knew it was a long shot. We were asked to adjust one of our options - the car type, pickup or drop off dates, or location - we can’t change any of those, so how do you get around that? I ended up making a new request, and I put it all in my name this time, and used my own credit card (everything was in my husband’s name on our first request.) For my 2nd request, I upp’ed the price we were willing to pay to $25 (still a deal, remember - the cheapest company wanted $35 a day) and we found out in a minute our bid was accepted.

The company that accepted our bid wasn’t the cheapest - in fact, they were one of the more expensive, quoting almost $600 total including taxes and fees for our 9 day rental. Our total by using Priceline though, will be only $300! Not bad for a 9 day minivan rental with unlimited miles, from a major rental car company.