Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with avis

Renting a car for the first time ever. What should I know?

madcaptenor — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 08:09:03 -0800

Renting a car for the first time ever. What should I know? I'm renting a car the weekend after next to go to the wedding of some friends. It's local, and I could get there by public transit, but it's an evening wedding so I'd have trouble getting back. (Plus I don't really relish the idea of riding Philly public transit in a suit and carrying a gift that's supposed to still look nice when I get there.)

I've never rented a car before. What should I know about How Car Rental Works? I'm 25; I have no car insurance of my own because I don't currently own a car. I do, of course, have a valid driver's license.

If it matters, this is with Avis, picking up at a downtown Philadelphia location and dropping off at a different downtown Philadelphia location thanks to the hours of the various locations. I'm using Avis because they inconvenienced my mother about something and so she ended up with some coupons for them that she won't have a chance to use. I already made the reservation; they didn't ask for a credit card number or a phone number, which worries me a bit.

Also, is there some other obvious solution to my transportation problem that I've missed? Since the rental car folks don't have my credit card info I can back out of the reservation. The distance is far enough that a cab isn't really cost-effective.

Is the MasterRental benefit all it's cracked up to be?

mr. creosote — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:42:36 -0800

Question about the "MasterRental" rental insurance benefit that most of us have on our MasterCards. I was looking through the MasterRental benefit that came with my credit card and was thinking "joy! now I can decline the costly LDWs when I'm renting a car."

However I got to reading the fine print and saw "coverage is secondary to any other applicable insurance or coverage available to you." So it sounds like what would happen is if I do damage the rental car or the rental place blames me for some ding that I didn't do, MasterRental would tell me to use my own insurance, leaving me holding the bag and having to either pay cash or get a black mark with my insurance company.

Is this the case? Can anyone shed light on this?

watch avis on tv

jgballard — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:08:58 -0800

Can anyone recommend the best way to watch movies, stored as avi's or mpeg's on a MacBook Pro, on a Sony Wega TV that's about eight years old? Is something like Apple TV the best, or a device like the Galaxy Tvisto Amazon used to sell? I realize my relatively old-school TV may make things harder...

How can I convert a MAC AVI file to MPEG?

shotsy — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 22:48:39 -0800

I have an AVI file on a mac. I would like to convert it for use in After Effects and eventual burn onto DVD. I can handle the second part, but I'm having trouble converting the AVI to MPEG. (More Inside) My stumbling seems to come from the way the audio is encoded. with the divx plugin I can get video in QT but no audio. I have the pro version of Quicktime, and access to a PC, so if it would be easier there (though I don't have any video software on that), it is an option as well. Many thanks.

Combining video files on a Mac

majick — Sun, 04 Jul 2004 09:18:37 -0800

Joining video on a Mac: I have a friend who has several sets of WMVs and AVIs and would like to combine them into single, contiguous movies. ~~I'm~~He's not going to have to buy something expensive, is he? What do you use to rejoin your porn on OSX?