Renting a Car in the Midnight Sun
May. 20th, 2024 11:03 amThis weekend I clicked into the place the final piece of our travel arrangements for visiting Alaska next month. I booked a rental car. I slept on doing this for a few weeks because prices with all the conventional car rental agencies (Avis, Hertz, et. al.) were absurd. Like, $1,000 for a 5-day rental absurd. Instead I booked with Turo, a C2C car rental arranger. Turo is like AirBnB for car rental.
I slept on booking with Turo for two weeks because I had doubts about how well it works. For example, our flight to Anchorage arrives at 11pm. We'd want to pick up the car around 11:30. But would a private owner be able to complete a business transaction at that hour? Ultimately the price difference was compelling— it's less than half the (huge) cost of a conventional rental, though for an older/smaller car— so I took the plunge and clicked "Buy".
The service suggested as my next step I install the app on my phone and message the car owner. "Hmm, good idea," I thought. I messaged the owner about the 11:30pm thing, explaining that if the late-night hour didn't work I could pick up the car early the next morning as we'd be staying in Anchorage that night.
"No problem with 11:30," she explained. The car would parked on a public street and have some kind of lock-box for me to get the key. "And the sun doesn't really set, so at 11:30pm you'll still be able to take pictures of the car."
Oookay, I wasn't expecting that, but it makes sense. Now I'm really looking forward to this trip into the land of the midnight sun!
I slept on booking with Turo for two weeks because I had doubts about how well it works. For example, our flight to Anchorage arrives at 11pm. We'd want to pick up the car around 11:30. But would a private owner be able to complete a business transaction at that hour? Ultimately the price difference was compelling— it's less than half the (huge) cost of a conventional rental, though for an older/smaller car— so I took the plunge and clicked "Buy".
The service suggested as my next step I install the app on my phone and message the car owner. "Hmm, good idea," I thought. I messaged the owner about the 11:30pm thing, explaining that if the late-night hour didn't work I could pick up the car early the next morning as we'd be staying in Anchorage that night.
"No problem with 11:30," she explained. The car would parked on a public street and have some kind of lock-box for me to get the key. "And the sun doesn't really set, so at 11:30pm you'll still be able to take pictures of the car."
Oookay, I wasn't expecting that, but it makes sense. Now I'm really looking forward to this trip into the land of the midnight sun!