Hire Car Upgrading

[Hemelman]

I've booked an intermediate size car with Dollar through Travel City & was thinking of upgrading to a full size.

Is it cheaper to do it via Travel City or should I wait until I arrive in Florida. Anyone have experience of this?

Cheers
Mick

 

[steve_rob]

Personally, I'd do it with Travel City. I've heard, although I cannot guarantee it is true, that if you upgrade when you reach the desk it costs more as you have to pay extra in the form of commission (that's why the sales staff always pester you on the upgrade - because it's in their interest.)

However, sometimes you get lucky. One time we'd booked an Economy car and when we reached the desk, the member of staff asked about an upgrade (no), then told us we really needed one because of how much luggage we had (No), then virtually begged us to take one (NO!). We must have been there for 15 minutes and I couldn't work out why.

When we eventually got to our car, I worked it out. It was HUGE, a full size at LEAST (maybe higher). It seems they had run out of all the smaller size cars, so what they were trying to do was get customers to pay for larger cars via upgrading, even though if you refused they had no choice but to give you a larger car anyway!

 

[matty624]

In my experience it is always cheaper to upgrade before you go. However, sometimes they give you free upgrades when you get there (which is obviously the cheapest way to go!), but this has only happened a couple of times to us. If a particular size of car is important to you, I'd recommend upgrading before leaving. (I don't know what TCD charge, but it's usually not alot to upgrade to full size or even premium, it starts getting a tad more expensive after that!)
Ian

 

[Hilary]

If the cost with TCD isn't too much, I'd agree that you'd probably be better off upgrading before you get to Florida.

I haven't used TCD, so don't know their pricing structure but, for example, according to the Virgin brochure it would cost somewhere in the region of £70 to upgrade from E4 to I4 for two weeks.

 

[Aceman88888]

We asked at Sanford about upgading our 7 seater minivan to a Jeep Grand Cherokee (our party was smaller than we expected). I was expecting a small nominal charge but was amazed at being quoted an extra $280 for 2 weeks (Salesperson said that was 25% lower than his list price!). Needless to say, I politely declined and he dropped the price to $200. Then he asked me what I was willing to pay and I said nothing!.... by that time I was lost for words!

 

[Minniespal]

I would agree with earliar posts. If you are looking to upgrade your car do it before you get to Florida.

 

[MalcolmC]

Last year we had a 4 x4 booked thinking it was going to be a Jeep Cherokee. When we arrived at MCO it was a Dodge Durango and DW wasn't happy!

When I enquired about changing to a Luxury car which was the same price as a 4 x 4 in the UK, Dollar wanted $30 per day. After a lot of haggling it came down to $25 per day at which point I told him to keep it.

In the end the Durango was OK.

The moral of the story is book the size or type of car you want in the UK and pay for all the extras beforehand too.

I'm off on my Virgin Flydrive next week but I won't be collecting the Virgin car that's included. They want twice as much for all the upgrades etc. as I am paying for the car I have booked independently.