Rental Car Availability Do they ever not have the car you reserved

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Apr 10, 2006
I reserved a mini-van from Dollar for an upcoming California trip. Prices are VERY high due to the area we are going and a one way rental (dropping car off at another airport). Finally after combing these boards I found a price I could live with.

I just changed our flight time so we will be landing two hours earlier. When I went to change the rental reservation to reflect a new pick up time I got a message that requested car type is not available. So I closed out of the "modify reservation" screen. I'm hopeful that if I show up two hours earlier (10pm instead of midnight) they will just charge me the extra two hours or whatever. But now I'm nervous they won't have the minivan I reserved. Have you ever shown up to the rental counter and they not have the vehicle class you reserved?
 
It's very possible they won't have a minivan available, especially for such a late pick up. Sometimes they run out of cars completely. You might want to look at different rental companies if you need a minivan.
 
I had the opposite problem a couple of times on business trips. I had an intermediate reserved and all they had were mini vans, which I didn't want. Once in Allentown, PA and once in Hartford, CT. The Allentown was Avis and the Hartford was National. In Allentown, I took a compact and in Hartford they found a full size.
 
You can try calling vs. using the website. I have changed flight times a few times, and called (ALAMO in my case), and they did it at no increase in cost, or under $20. It is worth a shot.

As for not having a car we reserved, we had a HUGE fight at MCO one time (Alamo) when we had reserved a Premium SUV. They would not/could not? give us one. We pointed to one sitting there, and still they would not budge, said that was spoken for. They kept bring us mid SUVs, and we would refuse. (6 of us, lots of luggage, and a large WC). Then they offered a regular minivan. We finally agreed to a large minivan, a Sienna, which worked, but was a bummer because I was telling the kids, "wait until you see the car we rented!!". LOL, I did not mean a minivan, I meant a Surburban. It was awful, it was over 90 degrees, and the 4 kids, including the one in the WC, were really miserable during all this.
 


Although we do not rent from an airport, we have had some crappy experiences renting cars for our Disney trip. My husband, on 2 different occasions, got to our place of rental at the time we picked, to find they were either out of cars in the class we booked...or the one or two cars left had over 50,000 miles and were disgusting. Two years ago we were 3 hours late leaving for our trip, since the rental place had to scour every local location to try and find us a car. Needless to say, I had two miserable toddlers, as well as two completely stressed out adults. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed for this years trip!!! Good luck to you!
 
I wonder if it's your own reservation that's causing the problem? They expect one minivan in that evening, and you have it reserved at midnight. Therefore you can't have it at 10, since the system probably doesn't know that you are you?
 


Does it give you any better chance of getting your car if you check in online? I have a rental with Alamo for an 8 passenger van - I have to have the 8 passenger because there are 8 people going. Alamo is the only one that I have seen with that category. I arrive around 12:30 p.m. - so I am hoping that there won't be too much of a problem but what would happen if they don't have an 8 passenger available? Do you think I can get 2 smaller cars for the same price?
 
We have had issues when needing larger cars. Moving my DD to college a long way from home; we were planning to pick up/buy things she needed at our destination. They did not have the size we reserved, it was either wait for one to be returned or take a smaller SUV. We had to make 2 trips from our hotel to her college with the things we bought, but at least it wasn't too far a drive.

I have also had them try to upsell me at the counter when they did not have the small car I reserved. When I insisted I wanted the small car, she admitted she did not have one and they had to give me a larger one at the same price. I really did not want the larger one, but that was what I got.
 
Yes, our big fight about the SUV was that when I booked it, it said it sat 7 people. We had 6, but that Convaid WC is like a 7th person, I swear. Plus it said it had lots of luggage space. Normally, we just pick our own vehicle at Alamo, minivans or cars, depending on what we booked. I was wandering around looking for the Premium SUVs and could not find any. Finally asked an employee, they said, oh, we do not have those on the lot, we bring them to you. OK. We waited, and they pulled up a mid type SUV (5 seater) or ones that if you put down a 3rd row, had zero luggage space. They did this a couple of times. I said, where is the Suburban type vehicle? Like that one over there? (there was one sitting by their office). They said, it SAYS, "or comparable" in small print, you are not getting that one. I said, comparable is any premium SUV that seats 7, any make and model that fits that is ok!! Thats when they started walking us around the minivans, and again a fight about those, until a 3rd manager let us take the Toyota Sienna. I think they want to "save" the Premium SUVs to use to upsell large parties who book a minivan or whatever. I had gotten a weirdly low rate on that vehicle, so I think they saw that, and decided no way are they getting that car for that price. I think the 8 seater vans will be available, and normally other cars are available too, except for the 2 smallest sizes, which they will just give a mid size for free if you refuse to upgrade to mid.

Like I said before, it was really bad because it was really unbearably hot while this was all going on (August at MCO, midday). It was years ago. I have rented from Alamo many times since, with no trouble, usually mid SUVs, as it is no longer the 6 of us, the kids are grown up now. It was a fluke weird thing.
 
Just double check the invoice. I was charged by National for almost $200 for picking the car less than a hour early. The original quote was not honored, and I was not told until at the drop off. It was in the invoice, but I didn't pay attention.
 
MomForFrozenAddicts said:
Just double check the invoice. I was charged by National for almost $200 for picking the car less than a hour early. The original quote was not honored, and I was not told until at the drop off. It was in the invoice, but I didn't pay attention.
Click to expand...

When you change the rental period by picking up the car early or turning it in late, your quote is no longer valid.
 
We had a situation where we arrived at the counter of Budget 20 mins early for our rental. Our flight had gotten in a bit early and our luggage was some of the first unloaded. When we asked if we could pick up now, they said sure, but wanted to charge us as much for those 20 mins as we were paying for the whole week! We sat and waited the 20 mins.

Another time, our flight was moved up, I went online with Alamo and modified our reservation for the extra hour, and it was no charge.

Just make sure you ask questions and check the rate. They will be happy to add the time, but for a price sometimes.
 
Once at the Tampa airport I had reserved a compact car. When I got to the desk the clerk was trying to upsell me to a luxury car but I refused. He said "Well in that case we are out of everything but luxury cars so I'll upgrade you to that at no charge". Wound up in a big Chrysler 300 for the price of a compact. Big black thing that looked like a limo. So, always refuse the upgrade because you may get it anyway for no charge.
 
We have had that happen. In Orlando years and years ago Budget tried to upsell us to an SUV- which we did not want. We said no and guess what, they upgraded us at no charge to an SUV.

More recently at Daytona Airport we booked a standard with Alamo and they downgraded us to a midsize ( you do not get to pick your car there like Orlando). And funny enough just a couple weeks ago at Daytona, Alamo gave us the smallest premium they had (it was parked between tons of nicer cars)- as I had a great rate and was returning the car to Orlando. It worked for our needs but the last premium we had was much better!
 
We tend to arrive at MCO very late - as in after 11 p.m. Twice with Alamo, there were no cars in the class we rented : one year we were met in the garage by a gentleman who stated he was the "manager", and due to some thunderstorms in the area, there were no standard cars (WTH???, but Okaaaaay). He told us we could choose from the premium isle at no additional cost. DH picked a gorgeous Lincoln with very low miles that year - it drove like a dream and even had air-conditioned leather seats. That was a steal as it cost us $160 for 11 days.

Flash forward to the following year : we reserved whatever class has Impalas in them. We get to the garage (Alamo again), and every car in that isle had people loading their stuff into them except for a brand-new looking one that had locked doors. I go to the booth in the garage to express my concern over the lack of cars, and am told we could go choose a SUV if we wanted to, for no additional charge. DH chose a Mazda that year, again very nice. That rental cost us $214 for 9 days. Overall, we've been lucky with Alamo. We'll see how it goes this year when we arrive in MCO at 11:30 p.m. in search of our reserved mid-sized SUV. (fingers crossed)
 
I once arrived in Tampa with a reservation at Hertz. Their ENTIRE fleet was gone. No one was able to get a car, even with reservations. They kept telling us they were backed up with cleaning the cars as their excuse. It took over 2 hours before I finally got a car. It doesn't happen often, but it is a possibility.
 
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