Fair comment, always wise to look into things properly of course, I was puzzled by what you meant by "location fee", $750 seemed a hell of a sting, the few times I have dropped a car off somewhere else I wasn't charged, but most times it was either 'downtown' instead of at the airport or vice versa and on the other hand last year we picked a car up in Eilat and dropped it off in Tel Aviv. a distance of 220 miles /350 km with no extra charge- some companies seem to have a nominal fee, but I've never come across a charge like you had. Mind, Florida to New York...
I have to admit that I do get rather stressed about hiring cars, as someone mentioned on the thread you can get sucked in with an unexpected special offer and not notice that there's a hidden catch buried in the small print. Then there are things like CDW, TP, LDW and SLI regarding car insurance; I've made a checklist in my holiday book of things to watch out for when planning a holiday and the section on car hire gets very carefully checked before committing.
One thing I always have now is extra insurance from Insurance4CarHire, (see insurance4carhire.com ) which provides excess cover and things like damage to tyres, for European rentals it costs £40 for a year which works out a hell of a lot cheaper for us as we rent a car at least twice a year in Europe, we did claim for a damaged tyre once (I sliced the sidewall of tyre open on the razor-edged granite kerbstones in Ronda) and they sorted it no bother. For the Israel-Jordan trip last year we needed the 'Worldwide' cover and for this year we shall need the 'USA and Canada' cover, as the 'Worldwide' cover will still be running we can upgrade that to 'USA and Canada' cover. As it happens our daughter will be working in the States for some months so perhaps I'll be making use of that one-off payment on a couple of holidays there.
As for the advisability of getting excess insurance, well, we have been lucky in the past when getting free upgrades, in 1991 we got one from something quite ordinary- I forget what- to a Chrysler Imperial, a huge battleship of a thing, I remember giggling like an idiot when I was offered it, but it turned out to be magnificent for touring, all the bells and whistles, acres of room and electric everything, (as in electrically adjusted seats that remembered individual settings for instance) reminders for everything: boing boing boing if you left the key in the ignition, another bing bing bing for locking the door with a window open, automatic transmission of course: all new to a limey from across the pond, and rather enchanting if truth be told. Anyway I hadn't realise there was a humungus excess on the insurance on the upgraded car, it might have been about fifteen hundred dollars if I remember. I didn't need to claim mercifully, and ever since I have taken a closer interest in car rental insurance.