Some Car Renters Socked With $8 a Gallon

YOU THOUGHT $4 a gallon gas was a nightmare? How about $8? That's what you could wind up paying if you get hit with the dreaded "refueling charge" next time you rent a car.

The sticker shock comes when customers opt to refill the tank themselves but end up returning it less than full or empty. Say you rent a Hyundai Sonata with a 17-gallon tank. After a few days of driving around California wine country, you bring it back empty. You could be looking at a $136 refueling charge vs. about $68 if you'd filled up the tank on your own. (Avis (CAR) charges $8 a gallon to refuel.)

It's a fee that's easily avoided. Drivers have two alternative fuel options: You can fill up the car before returning it or prepay for a tank at the time of rental to avoid having to do it yourself. With the prepay option, the renter buys a full tank of gas at a fixed per-gallon rate, slightly below market price. For example, Hertz's new refueling policy, as of July 1, offers the option to prepurchase a tank of gas at 15 cents less than the market price in that particular location. (If gas costs $4.35 a gallon near Miami's airport, renters can prebuy a full tank at $4.20 a gallon.) Granted, the prepay option isn't a great deal if you're not planning to use a full tank of gas.

If you choose to refuel the car yourself but then don't, expect to get hit with inflated gas prices of between $5 and $8 a gallon, says Anne Banas, executive editor of Smarter Travel Media.

"The chance of getting upgraded is strong. Sometimes you get an SUV instead of an economy car, and the rental might cost more in the end," says Banas. If you get stuck with a gas hog, ask the rental agency to pay for a tank of gas to help offset the cost of having to fill an SUV. "You can still negotiate," she says.

Say you rent a Toyota Prius from Hertz at the Los Angeles airport on July 29. Your estimated rental bill will come out to $325 for two days (including tax, airport concession fee and facility charge), according to a search on Hertz's web site. Driving from L.A. to San Francisco round-trip will cost you at least $60 in gas, according to AAA's fuel cost calculator. Renting a Hyundai Accent will cost $247 for the same number of days, plus about $80 to drive the same distance. With gas costs, that comes to about $385 for the hybrid, compared with $327 for the Hyundai.

"If you're really environmentally-conscious, you might want to pay that premium. But if you're more concerned about cost, don't get the Prius," says Banas.

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