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(c) Elliott Publishing.

Gas Cartel
Cheap Charlie · June 12, 2000

Oh boy, are gasoline prices skyrocketing!

Now, I don't want to seem like a Johnny-come-lately to this situation, but last week when traveling in Oregon and Washington State, I overheard gasoline prices that were scary.

For a second I thought I had landed in Paris where gas costs $4.25 a gallon, or in Amsterdam where gas is going for $4.48 a gallon according to Runzheimer, a consulting firm specializing in travel and living costs.

Realizing I have recently shifted continents, I checked again. No Eifle Tower. No canals. My boarding pass said I was in Portland, but the gasoline prices I was hearing suggested I was somewhere overseas.

These prices weren't displayed at gas stations. The local "street" price of gas seemed to be about $1.60 per gallon. Where I saw these prices was at the Hertz, Avis, National, Dollar and other car rental counters at the Seattle and Portland airports.

Try $4.00 per gallon on for size.

Holy Arab sheiks! It isn't the captains of the Arabian caravans that we have to fear. That maligned OPEC oil cartel doesn't have anything on our good old car rental cartel. Next to the insatiable sheiks of Hertz and Avis the OPEC Arabian pretenders are just an impotent band of camel traders.

If, in the future, there should ever be a chance that we could choose between having the OPEC Arabian princes and kings set our gasoline prices or our own U.S. automobile rental company cartel, we should all hope that the Arab sheiks win out.

The price of $4.00/gallon is what the car rental cartel is charging customers to fill the tank on rental cars returned with less than a full gasoline tank.

If a customer is careless enough to forget to fill the tank before returning a rental car, the financial pain is whopping! Try almost $2.40 more per gallon based on my observations.

Here is what happens.

If you decide to pay for a full tank of gas and return your car with the tank as close to empty as possible, the automobile rental cartel only will charge customers $1.60 a gallon. (Those were the prevailing prices while I listened to the gasoline options.)

For the record, paying for your gas upfront is a fool's game. You may be able to bring the car back with only fumes, but I know of no one who has managed to have their rental car coast into the return lane.

Don't succumb to the line that the rental car operators are doing you a favor by selling gasoline below market cost when you pay up front. Paying for something you do not use is never a bargain.

The bottom line, is always to return your car with the gasoline tank filled. This is the only option that is in the customer's best interest.

If the automobile rental cartel tops off up your car, they charge $4.00 a gallon for the gas you purchase (at least in Portland and Seattle in early April). I count this as a very hefty additional fee for service. A strange way of saying, "Thank you, we appreciate your business."

Charlie Leocha is the Boston-based author of Travel Rights: Know the Rules of the Road and the Air Before You Go. Cheap Charlie appears every Monday on this site. E-mail him at charlie@ticked.com or access his Web site.