If my rental car pickup/dropoff times are off by an hour will Alamo change my rate?

[frannn]

I booked my rental car back in Feb when I had exact dates but not my exact flight times. I got a mid sized SUV from Alamo for 11 days for 178, picking up at 10:30 am, dropping at 3 pm. My flight with Jetble lands at 10:45, so we will definetly be late picking up the car. The flight home is scheduled to leave Orlando at 4:40, so worst case scenario, we could be 10-15 minutes late returning the car. At what point will Alamo not honor my rate?

Also wondering if there are weather issues which keep us in Orlando extra days, and we wish to keep the car longer, how the rate for the extra days is calculated.
Thanks!

 

[salmoneous]

If you are an hour or two late picking up / dropping off the car, it's generally not a problem, so long as you are within the amount of time you've booked for. In other words, if you are booked from 10 am day 1 through 4 pm day 11, you are fine picking up at 11 am day 1 and dropping off at 6 pm day 11. You are still within your 11 booked days just an hour or two off. But if you are booked from 10am day 1 through 10 am day 11, and you pick up at 10 am day 1 and drop off at 12 noon day 11, then you get charged for extra days.

If you bring the car back a couple days late, they can do all sorts of things (and there is really no way to know what they will do, I've seen all of the following):

1) If they are nice, they'll just charge the extra days at whatever rate you paid for the days you booked

2) The most common tactic is to charge you rack rate for the extra days.

3) They usually have the right cancel your initial reservation and charge you rack rate for the entire time you have the car. This kind of crap is extremely rare from the major carriers, but is more common with the no-name "I can't believe it's so cheap" guys.

 

[donkthemagicllama]

You can try change your booking online... not sure about Alamo, but with National when you go to modify your reservation, the last step will show your existing reservation and proposed changes, both with their respective price quotes and ask you which you want to keep.

I ran into the same problem with my flights, and modified my reservation. I was worried I wouldn't get the same great rate (since when I tried booking a new reservation, the price had gone up substantially), but there was no price difference to move my reservation by a couple hours.

 

[NotUrsula]

It often depends on the day of the week, especially if you are picking up on a Thursday for a weekend rate. Pick up before 12 and your weekend rate won't be valid, return after noon on Tuesday and the same thing might happen.

Remember that all rentals are on a 24 hour clock, so MOST of the time (except cases like the Thursday catch above), if you pick up a few hours later and also return a few hours later it won't matter, as long as you have the vehicle for the same number of hours as you originally intended.

 

[PooohBear]

Sign in to Alamo and go to view/modify ressie, then you can change the times ! I did that last week and it was a difference of a couple of bucks !

 

[tracys2cents]

There is no need to change your booking. Reservations are held for four hours past booking time and generally even longer. With all the flight delays etc, car companies are used to late arrivals.