Saving on rental cars

In November our family took a trip down to Arizona. We were able to get great flights out of Missoula, MT..more on that later. While shopping for a rental car we checked out the rental companies rates online. Prices varied greatly. For the airport we were flying into, we found that Alamo had the best rates. They wouldn't let me book it online with my debit card, so I had to call down to Phoenix and book it directly at the airport. They weren't able to give me quite as good of a deal as was advertised if I booked through http://www.alamo.com/, but they assured me it was the best rate they could give me. I also was able to verify that there wouldn't be any extra holds put on my debit card when renting the car. When comparing prices I also checked out what coupons were available. Alamo had a coupon for one free day with a week long rental. I took that with us when we rented the car. We also checked with our insurance company to find out if our car insurance covered us in the rental car. They verified that we had the same coverage as we had for our own vehicle (but it wouldn't cover loss of usage fees in case of an accident). So we were able to waive any extra insurance that was offered. The total for our 8 days with unlimited miles was $186.43. (Hertz was going to charge $340 for those 8 days!) Alamo had great customer service and were very quick and efficient at check-in.