My NATIONAL rates went UP

[canwegosoon]

I have confirmed reservations(2)...for my up coming trip...and both have gone up($20-30). I printed out origional reservations and I have not modified them in any way...don't they have to honor this? And on a revervation that I wad trying to modify, they were charging me current reservation prices...and all I was doing was extending by 2 hours...due to a flight change. I have never had these problems before....not so happy now

 

[bicker]

Any time you change a car rental reservation, unless you paid a deposit or did a pre-pay, you're subject to the prevailing rates, and therefore lose any rates you might of had previously.

 

[canwegosoon]

Any time you change a car rental reservation, unless you paid a deposit or did a pre-pay, you're subject to the prevailing rates, and therefore lose any rates you might of had previously.

Thanks, I figured that out...but do you think they will honor my totally unchanged reservations, at the confirmed price?

 

[cigar95]

Any time you change a car rental reservation, unless you paid a deposit or did a pre-pay, you're subject to the prevailing rates, and therefore lose any rates you might of had previously.

Interestingly enough, Brian, this seems to not be the case with National. Depending on what sort of changes one is making, it seems that the previous rate will still be the one that holds for the reservation.

I know, for instance, that one can apply a coupon or a discount code and still keep the original base rate. I just did that myself last week. Similarly, one can *shorten* a reservation and keep the previous rate.

*Extending* a reservation seems to be unclear. As an experiment, I tried adding a day to a reservation I made when prices were much lower than they are now. It looks like the original rate still applies for the original rental period, but the new higher rate was applied to the additional day. (I'm not certain this is what happened, but the rate is far lower than it would have been for a new reservatin at currently available rates.)

This is still a much better situation than National had a few years ago. Because of quirks in their web site programming, it was not uncommon for the rate to change on a reservation simply as a result of calling it up to reconfirm its status. (Ain't the web a wonderful place?)

Having said all this, I can't explain what happened to our original poster. My suggestions would be first to just try it again, and see if it was a hiccup in the reservation computer, or, second, call the National 800 number and try the change through an agent.

I think there may also be a separate number for web support - that would be the number to call first, since often phone agents and online reservations have different rates.

(Added after the fact) - There's a place on the web site where you can send questions/inquiries without having to go through the phone. Click on the "contacts" tab, and then on the link to "reservations department".

 

[maps]

cigar95
how did you apply a coupon to a national reservation and not have it change the rate? I tried to add a coupon to my existing reservation and it changed my base rate.

thanks

 

[MickeyCrazed]

"and all I was doing was extending by 2 hours"


I've been fooling with Nationals website for several months now (since they "upgraded it").
I could not understand why if I rent a car from Sunday to Friday (picking up and dropping off the car at 12 noon) I would get a price of 127.00.
But if I adjust the hours slightly (ex. picking up at 12 noon and dropping off at 2pm) the rate would jump to 179.00.
It never used to be this way, and for the life of me I couldn't figure it out...
That is until last night!
I finally realized that those 2 hours were making the rate jump from a 5 day rental to a weekly rental rate.
Not worth it in my opinion. I used to be able to pick up at 9am and drop off at 9pm without a change in rate (or if there was it was very minor).
Thus, for the first time in 10 years, National will not get my business during my upcoming trip. I am renting with Alamo instead. (I know, they are sister companies... but I got a $104 rental rate for 6 days in a SUV!)

 

[riu girl]

What would happen if I drop off my National rental early?

I currently have an EA rate of $229 (inclusive) for 15 days and am afraid to modify my ressie online in case the rate goes up.
Currently I am returning the rental at 8 pm but will in fact be dropping it off around 1 pm.

By dropping it off early I won't in any way interfere with this great rate will I??
If I was to book this a new ressie the rate is now the $900s. That is why I am scared to modify the drop off time online.

Thank you
Suzy

 

[cigar95]

cigar95
how did you apply a coupon to a national reservation and not have it change the rate? I tried to add a coupon to my existing reservation and it changed my base rate.

thanks

Well, I didn't do anything special. I did a "modify reservation", added the coupon code, and then the "new" and "old" reservations were shown side by side. The only difference was one had the code and the other didn't. I was given a choice to keep either one or the other.

Did the site show you both choices, with different base rates? If so, I don't know what to tell you. The NAtional site has been doing it the way I experienced for quite a while now, but we all know the new improved site has a number of bugs.

Is your reservation an Emerald Aisle reservation? Mine is, and the software could work differently depending on that. Also, my reservation is in February of '06. Don't know if the date matters or not. (It's all voodoo!)

 

[SleepyatDVC]

I finally booked my airfare today and went back to check the National car rental reservation I made back in Ausust.

My e-mail confirmation back in August quoted a price of $188.66 for the week. I cut and pasted the confirmation # and went to the National website just to VIEW the reservation on-line and the website quoted me a price that was almost double!!!

So which is correct because now the higher price is the one that the computer is pulling up and the only confirmation I have of the lower price is an e-mail confirmation!

 

[Poorman]

Something is wrong... If you have a confirmation that is what you should pay. If you go to the National site and pull up your reservation and it is not the same, I would call National and tell them that they have a problem with their web site, give them your confirmation number and they will take care of it. Good luck....

 

[BoCat]

I called National when I checked my January reservation on line and it showed the price to be about $4.00 more than what I had orginally booked.
They told me when I booked there was a glitch in the system and it shouldn't have honored my coupon since i had used a free weekend coupon but wasn't staying over a saturday(which the coupon did state was necessary) I told the person i was talking to that i thought they should honor my original request-I was put on hold a number of times-finally i asked to speak to a supervisor-which I did-but got the run around AGAIN!! Needless to say I'm paying the extra $4.00--So Be Prepared--If you have a email confirmation stating the price you SHOULD pay-BE PREPARED TO PAY MORE!!!!!!!!

 

[lawgs]

we have found that when you are changing the reservation through modifying it on the national car website, that the initial "page" where you choose what vehicle you want has come up higher than our original reservation, but when we choose and continue on to the next page, the changes we have made are in red and the original charges appear ( we have done this to change the times of pick up and drop off ), thus if you just look at the first page that comes up, it seems that the rate has gone up...

 

[LarryM]

What I do to avoid any problems in changes is instead of messing with the reservation I just make a new one and apply and coupons and such. If it comes out cheaper I book it and then cancel the original one.

 

[pxlbarrel]

I changed my pickup and drop off last month by 3 hours (3 hours later than originally planned). As lawgs said, the initial screen shocked the heck out of me as it showed a price 3 times more than what I was confirmed for but after after picking the same car that I wanted, the prices went back down to the confirmed price.

I've just checked my reservation and it's still the same.

 

[travelin' tigger]

Thus, for the first time in 10 years, National will not get my business during my upcoming trip. I am renting with Alamo instead. (I know, they are sister companies... but I got a $104 rental rate for 6 days in a SUV!)

I booked a last minute trip to FL next week and plan to spend 2.5 days at WDW. Need a rental car and National quoted me $89.95/day!!!!! I'm going with the cheapest I could find - E-Z rental @ Tampa airport for $112 for 3 days.

If National keeps this up, they're going to lose alot of business!!!!!

 

[bicker]

However, perhaps it is business that they don't find profitable. With the merging of Alamo and National, it isn't surprising that leisure travelers like us would fine the policies of National not-to-our-liking. I won't go into the gory details of how poorly Alamo has treated us as a customer, but I will say that National has always treated me personally as a king. It seems clear that the choice now folks have is between "low prices, poor service" and "high prices, good service." Seems like a fair choice to me, and a choice that I'll not always make in the same direction.