Paying for car rental..when?

[mbb]

Need a little help, please

When do you have to pay for your car rental? Is it when you pick up your vehicle, or when you return it?

TIA!

 

[Tigger_Magic]

Some companies put a reserve (maybe as much as $300) or get a pre-approval for some amount. In my experience, the charge has been put through upon my return of the car. That's when they determine final charges for how long you had the car, taxes, fees, etc.

Some companies are starting to offer pre-pay rentals, but with rates changing so much, I don't think those are a good deal.

 

[mbb]

Paying after you return it has always been our experience as well... Alamo has charged us for our reservation already, and we're not using the pre-pay discount.

Call me confused...and calling Alamo!!

 

[Tigger_Magic]

Alamo has started offering pre-pay rentals. I ran into these when booking a car for our spring break trip. Hotels do this also and unless you read the web site carefully, you could end up booking a pre-paid deal. (I've done that with hotels a couple of times.) Hope everything works out for you.

 

[mbb]

Update for Tigger Magic..and good stuff to say about Alamo

We had used the prepay discount, and in the process of doing the prepay, it cancels *any additional benefits* that your original booking conditions may carry.

Because you can't use the pre-pay in combination with other discounts. (Like many have posted )

In our case, we used our Costco membership, on the original reservation, to have a "free" additional driver. When the Alamo CSR said we could use the pre-pay, and applied the discount - incorrectly, if I wanted to keep the add'l driver, and I did - it negated that benefit...

....when I called to confirm the reservation - and inquire about our missing additional driver notation - Alamo's customer service dept was able to apply our additional driver/Costco benefit and discount. They cancelled and refunded the pre-pay reservation, and apologized for the error, so no harm done... but, here's where my confusion kicked in...

I forgot about the US$-CDN$ exchange.

So... my visa looked like Alamo had applied the charge for our reservation that hasn't happened yet (the $$ figure they refunded was in USfunds, the dollar figure that Visa has is in CDN funds, and the refund hasn't posted through Visa yet)...which prompted my question about "when do you have to pay"...

In summation!!
( ..if you're still with me, excellent! )

Alamo - good And willing to say sorry, we'll fix it.
Me - not so smart and willing to admit it from time to time

Check, confirm, and check again, folks. I'm glad I did
Thanks Tigger Magic!!

 

[Tigger_Magic]

Wow, a big to Alamo! I'm glad they worked things out.