Great deal on a car rental? Not till the extras are all tallied

Sticker shock at the car rental counter is among travelers’ most consistent complaints, judging by letters and e-mails to the Travel section.

One e-mail was from Newport Beach resident James Robertson. To his dismay, a rental car at the Spokane, Wash., airport ballooned from its $149.75-per-week base rate to nearly $500 after insurance, taxes, fees and an extra-driver charge.

An array of extra charges is loaded onto car rentals, especially at airports, a trend that shifted into high gear in the mid-1990s. The pace has since slowed but not stopped. Among the latest add-ons: a fee that some companies charge for collecting frequent-flier miles on rentals.

But there is good news on one front: It’s getting easier to gauge some of the charges in advance when you book on the Internet.

At www.travelocity.com, which introduced what it calls “total pricing” on car rentals in January, you can choose to see the “weekly rate” (base rate without taxes and fees) or “total price” (including taxes and fees) on rentals. This option has been available since May on the page where you begin your search, instead of several steps later, so you can compare prices across car types and companies.

At www.orbitz.com, you see only the base rates at first when you comparison shop. Once you select a car, you sometimes get the “estimated total,” with taxes and fees, and sometimes not.

So far such totals are available for only eight of the 23 rental companies that Orbitz lists, said spokeswoman Terri Shank. For others, I found, you must click on the fine print that says “Taxes & Fees” under “Weekly Rate” on the “Make Reservation” page. That links you to a pop-up box describing various add-ons by percentages or per day or per rental, depending on the fee type. There’s no total.

Shank said the site was expected to show more totals later this summer as they became available from Worldspan, one of the systems that feeds listings to Orbitz and other travel sellers.

Lagging behind is www.expedia.com, where only the base rate is prominently displayed. If you read the fine print under “Car Details” and click on “Taxes, insurance and additional fees may not be included,” you get a pop-up box of fees similar to some of the ones on Orbitz. As for the total, “you’ll have to kind of figure it out yourself,” said product manager Teri Franklin. (Or get the news at the rental counter.)

Expedia is working on the issue, Franklin said, and hopes to show estimated total prices by the end of summer.

Although progress is being made on displaying taxes and fees, it’s a different story for insurance -- by far the biggest add-on, which can easily double the cost of some rentals. At these three Web sites, I found some per-diem premiums listed but no totals. For those, you’ll need to do some math or consult the rental company.

I visited National’s Web site, www.nationalcar.com, and was pleasantly surprised to find listed -- all on the same page -- the base rate, each surcharge and tax, and the total. When I clicked on boxes to add three types of waivers and insurance -- loss damage waiver, personal accident insurance and supplemental liability insurance -- and hit “Recalculate,” I got the new total. All without leaving the page.

With all these additions, a $359.99-per-week SUV rental in Phoenix increased to $729.41. But at least I knew what I was getting into before I picked up the keys -- almost. Fees for additional drivers and charges for prepaid gas weren’t listed, for instance.

You may be able to avoid the rental company’s insurance and waiver charges by checking your own auto insurance or credit card policy. Those may cover you to some extent for damage to the rental car or for personal liability, in the U.S. at least. Call your insurer or car company for details. This is not a decision you want to make at the rental counter.

You don’t have much recourse when it comes to fees and taxes. Even figuring out what they are is a challenge.

Robertson of Newport Beach is an insurance consultant, so he’s well versed in figures and taxes. But a 10% “recoup fee” and a 68-cent “security transaction fee,” added to the Spokane car rental, were ciphers. “What are these?” he asked.

The recoup fee is the rental car company passing along to the customer a fee it pays to operate at the airport, said airport spokesman Todd Woodard. The security fee pays for a guard to inspect returning rental cars -- a requirement after the Sept. 11 attacks, he said.

Then there’s the Spokane transport fee, $1.50 per rental, which pays for the airport’s rental car facility, opened in 1997. Other add-ons include an 8.1% state sales tax and 6.9% state car rental tax.

Among airports with above-average charges on car rentals are Phoenix, Boston and Denver, said Jon LeSage, vice president of Abrams Travel Data Services in Long Beach, which surveyed taxes and fees at the 50 largest U.S. airports last year.

Renting away from the airport can help you avoid some charges and reduce your rental costs, sometimes significantly. My in-city Phoenix SUV rental, which cost $426.05 per week counting taxes and fees but not insurance, would have cost $502.37 if I had rented at the airport, even though the base rate was the same, according to National’s Web site.

Other taxes applied to car rentals may be used to build local stadiums, sports arenas and convention centers, Abrams’ survey found. Even if you don’t visit these facilities, you’re still paying for them.

“It’s taxation without representation,” contends Neil Abrams, president of Abrams Consulting Group in New York, which provides management consulting for the rental car industry and oversees LeSage’s company.

Certainly we travelers didn’t get to vote on these taxes. But at least we’re getting a better look at them before we arrive at the rental counter.

Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.