National Returning Car early???

[KathyR]

What happens if you return your car a bit early? Basically, I may shorten our trip by about 15 hours. I know they would charge me a full days rental anyway since we will pick up the car at 11 AM day of arrival and drop it off at 7:30 PM upon our leaving, but on my ressie I have the drop off the next day at 11 AM. Do you think this will be a problem since it is still technically the same amount of days on the rental?

A new ressie is $25 more, so I would like to keep what I have

 

[GAIL HAYDEN]

15 hours is more than a "bit early". Call National and see if they will modify that ressie without charging you or find out what they consider a "bit early".

 

[KathyR]

Ok, so it may be more than a "bit early," but it is still technically a 10 day rental. They charge you an extra full day for anything over an hour, so with my pick up at 11AM, I would have to return it by 12 PM to not be charged for the extra day. The charge for the rental would be the same whether I put in 7:30 PM or 11 AM the next day when I made the reservation. I am not asking for any discount for the time. I just thought if you returned early you would be charged the full rental which is fine since that is what we would owe anyway.

I was merely asking if anyone had any knowledge of what would happen before I contact them.

 

[GAIL HAYDEN]

Kathy,
I totally understood what you were saying, I was trying to tell you that some rental car companies have "early" return rules that are best left answered by the company. Each one is different and the best bet is to go to the source, as it were. This avoids misinformation (assuming you get the correct information from the "source". )

 

[Ralph&Pam]

Actually extra charges for National are based on 24-hour days from the pick-up time. National charges for 1 hour extra (dropped off more than one hour after the pick-up time but less than 120 minutes late). The hourly rate is usually one-half the daily rate, so being 2 or more hours late will cost an entire extra day.

With that said, dropping off 15 hours early will come up on the hand-held computer as the reserved number of days and you should simply be charged for the reserved time. In your case, if you had picked the car up at 11 AM, your tenth day starts at 11 AM on the ninth day and a drop off anytime after 1 PM on that day up until 12 noon on the next day should be charged the same (weekly plus 3 days, I assume).

The main time when you might have a problem with these bookings is when you are right between paying a daily rate for a multi-day rental and qualifying for a weekly rate. This should not be a problem with a 10-day rental.

I had an interesting problem with National a few years ago when I had just barely qualified for a "weekly" rate with a 4 day plus 3 hour booking (pick up scheduled for 10:30 am on Thursday, drop off scheduled for 1:30 pm on Monday). National's weekly rentals require a minimum 5-day stay and I was also using a weekly-rental discount coupon. This was January and we ended up iced in at O'Hare for most of Thursday, finally departing for MCO about 4 pm instead of our original 7:00 am departure. We picked up the car about 8 or 8:30 pm. Of course our return flight on Monday required check in at the airport by about 2 pm on Monday, so we planned to drop the car off as scheduled. We were using Counter (compact car, now I always use EA). Our "weekly" rental was now a 4-day rental and the rate to be charged was substantially higher (higher daily rate, no weekly discount coupon). I pleaded my case that I'd been stuck at the airport in Chicago for the better part of my first day of vacation, losing the benefit of all that fun in the sun and warmth of Florida and now I was having to pay even more for the pleasure because of the difference in weekly vs. daily rental rates. The National rep. at the counter played some magic with her computer and ending up dropping the daily rate to a level that made the total bill essentially the same as my original reservation quote. I left happy with the solution.
Ralph

 

[KathyR]

Thank you both for your replies!

I also emailed National about this, and they were VERY quick to respond! Here is their response

We do not have a problem with you returning the vehicle earlier. In order to get the exact information about the price change if any. You would need to call the location directly. If you need a phone number I would be more than happy to email that information.

 

[GAIL HAYDEN]

Kathy,
Glad National responded so quickly and I am REALLY happy that there will not be a problem.
Thanks for letting us know what the answer was.

 

[sgtdisney]

I emailed National with a similar question last week. I made a car rental reservation because the price was good, but still am working on my airline tickets.. They said the same thing to me that they told you. You are only charged for the time that you use the car. In my case, I may need the car for 16 days, or maybe only for 14 days.. They said that if I bring the car back on the 14th day, even if it is reserved for the 16 days I would only be charged for the 14 days (2 weeks) as opposed to the current 2 weeks + 2 days that are on my reservation. I am glad National answered you so quickly.

 

[bubbasmom99]

We have returned a car early to National with no problem. There was some sort of special, I think it was one free day on a weekly rental... but it required a Saturday night stay and we were only staying till Saturday morning. So I input my return as Sunday morning, but we left the car on Sat. morning. No questions or problems from National. We got the weekly rate with a day off versus paying for 5 days which would have cost more.