When making online car reservation, check websites for pickup info

Question: I recently used Hotwire to rent a car in Seattle. When I took the shuttle to the rental facility at the airport, I was told that my rental was at the downtown Seattle location. Why would Hotwire reserve a car for me downtown when I requested a car at the airport?

-- Lolly Bennett, Beverly Hills

Answer: Because it’s cheaper to rent downtown, and Hotwire is all about saving you money, even if it’s not convenient.

When you pick up a car at the Seattle airport, you pay these taxes: state sales tax 9.5%, state rental car tax 5.9%, King County rental car tax 1%, regional transit authority 0.8% and Seattle Mariners stadium tax 2%, for a total of 19.2%. But wait! There’s more! You also will pay an airport concession fee of 11.10% and a customer facility charge of $5 a day. If the base price of your rental car was supposed to be $20 a day for three days, your $60 rental fee will turn into about $93. If you go to a site other than the airport, your $60 car will cost you about $72. That difference can turn the head of careful bargain hunters such as Bennett.

I love a bargain too, so I tried booking a rental car through Hotwire, specifying SeaTac airport. Under “location,” some results said, “Counter and car are at the airport.” Others said, “Location varies by rental agency,” which I thought was code for “your car isn’t at the airport” but which Hotwire says “refers to the number of driving miles allowed during a car rental.” If that’s right, I don’t understand why it appeared where the “counter and car” message appeared on other listings.

Regardless, Bennett said she never saw that. I wouldn’t have either.

I tried a rental several days later, and this time, it seemed much clearer about where the car would be. Hotwire, however, says it has made no changes.

Isn’t it the customer’s responsibility to be the “careful bargain hunter”? Of course it is. Hotwire says that “all details are sent in a confirmation e-mail.”

But it’s also incumbent on online agencies to understand how we read on the Internet. In Nicholas Carr’s groundbreaking 2008 article in the Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” he argues that the Web has changed the way we read. He elaborated on the pitfalls in a recent e-mail to me: “Marketers have always used vague wording to hide the shortcomings of products and services, but the Internet provides an ideal setting for such obfuscation.

“The Net has trained us all to be superficial readers — to skim, scan, surf and browse. This style of reading allows us to gather lots of information very quickly, but what we often overlook are the subtle nuances of words and messages. As the reader discovered, that can raise the odds of being hoodwinked, particularly when we make online purchases. Before hitting the Buy button, it’s a good idea to hit your mind’s Pause button.”

In other words, slow down on the highway — regardless of whether it’s the interstate or the information superhighway.

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