Added cost in picking up prepaid car rental early?

[sophie131]

Hiya,

I guess strictly this may be best placed elsewhere but I posted here because we are on a budget right now and I figure this might ending up eating in to our spending money or waiting 4 hours at the airport and some advice might be able to help prevent that!

We pre-paid our Hertz rental a while ago through a third party site. Then they changed our flight times!

Our reservation says to pick up at 8.30pm but we will now be ready to pick it up at 4-4.30pm.

On the flipside we will be dropping it off 2 hours earlier on return than what we booked.

Does anyone have any experience with whether Hertz will let you take the car early? This is our first time using them. We cannot change our booking now as the charges have gone up loads since booking. I'm assuming they might let us take it early if we pay a bit extra but as we have prepaid i'm not sure how it works!

 

[leebee]

Not a clue. You should probably call them. Some thing to consider though, is how many days will you have the vehicle? Usually the price is the same for 5, 6, or 7 days. They charge you the week price.

If you review your reservation online, does it give you the option to make changes? You might be able to get some idea of what would happen, but really, you'd need to call- and I'm not sure if it's Hertz you call or the 3rd party site.

 

[sophie131]

We will have the car for 12 days total.

We did phone our 3rd party site yesterday and the only option they could give us was cancel and rebook - which we would have done but the extra 4 hours will cost us an extra $350!! I guess we can try when we get there or worst case just sit in the rental place looking sad and hope they give us it before the 4 hours are up!!!

 

[robinb]

Hiya,

I guess strictly this may be best placed elsewhere but I posted here because we are on a budget right now and I figure this might ending up eating in to our spending money or waiting 4 hours at the airport and some advice might be able to help prevent that!

We pre-paid our Hertz rental a while ago through a third party site. Then they changed our flight times!

Our reservation says to pick up at 8.30pm but we will now be ready to pick it up at 4-4.30pm.

On the flipside we will be dropping it off 2 hours earlier on return than what we booked.

Does anyone have any experience with whether Hertz will let you take the car early? This is our first time using them. We cannot change our booking now as the charges have gone up loads since booking. I'm assuming they might let us take it early if we pay a bit extra but as we have prepaid i'm not sure how it works!

Your reservation was supposed to start at 8:30 PM and now you are arriving at 4:30 PM. When do you drop off?

 

[sophie131]

We were due to drop of at 7pm but will now be dropping off at 3pm due to the change of return flight time too.

 

[leebee]

Call Hertz. It looks like you are picking up 4 hours earlier, but also dropping off 4 hours earlier, so your total rental time isn't really changing (if I am understanding correctly). I'd talk to Hertz directly and see if they can change this for you. I really don't like renting from Hertz- they can be a bit picky- and we never do pre-pay because it's non-refundable, but this is where you are so try talking with them and see if they can make the change without charging more!

 

[robinb]

We were due to drop of at 7pm but will now be dropping off at 3pm due to the change of return flight time too.

You should be fine picking up early as you are keeping the car for the same amount of time. 4:30 PM pick up and a 3:00 PM drop off is the same number of car rental "days". If you were to pick up earlier and drop off after 4:30 then you would owe more money.

Did you enter your flight number into your reservation when you made it? If not, I would enter it now so you have supporting documentation when your flight arrives.

 

[NotUrsula]

It "can" matter, if the rate that you got has a particular time-limit on it. For instance, most weekend rental rates require that you not pick the car up before noon on Thursday.

In your situation (long rental, and the change does not put you there before noon) there probably won't be that kind of restriction, but you should call Hertz to check for sure.

 

[sheetz]

If the cost of your rental would be the same with your new pickup/dropoff times then you probably won't be charged anything extra.

 

[seashoreCM]

it's up to the whim of the rental agent whether he will let you pick up the car early without charging you more.

I succeeded once and failed once with the same agency (not Hertz). The time I failed I just said I would be back at the appointed time.

It is not unusual to be refused an early pickup over the phone in advance but succeed when you went to the rental counter.

 

[sophie131]

Just to update;

Tried calling but the location would never pick up - which worried us slightly.

When we arrived we had no problems picking up early but our receipt stated estimated charge of $104.
When we returned (earlier than we had booked) our receipt was $0!!


Yay!! It would have been sad to pay $104 for a matter of 45mins or so!

 

[robinb]

thanks for the update! I'm glad everything worked out OK .