Avis - booking one-way rentals without incurring mileage

When booking a "RT" rental, there is no additional charge for mileage. But when booking a one-way, there is a charge of 0.28cents/mile. I found this very expensive when I needed to drop my vehicle at other locations.

I discovered this past weekend that if you call Avis and tell them that you need to drop the vehicle off at another location (after being booked as "RT") that they will only charge a fee. In my case, they charged me $40 to change my drop off location, which was 4hours away, and didn't charge me any mileage. This saved me well over $100 and I was able to drive the car without worrying about the miles on put on it.

Has anyone else had experience booking rentals this way? Is the fee a flat fee wherever I go? I feel if I do this too often, they'll start noticing it and red flagged me :(

Hmmm, I hope that works! I've used Hertz in the past for 1-ways because Avis charges high rates (usually $0.40/mi). I've called before but never had luck with a "drop fee" only, but that's been a while.

When booking a "RT" rental, there is no additional charge for mileage. But when booking a one-way, there is a charge of 0.28cents/mile. I found this very expensive when I needed to drop my vehicle at other locations.
Where have you run into this, and how far apart were your pickup and dropoff locations?

I don't do one-ways that often, but when I have in the past, I've never been charged mileage on them. (But it was generally co-terminal stuff, like rent in SNA and return at LAX or whatever.)

On the other hand, when I had a flight reroute and was stuck in ABQ for enough hours that I could have changed my LBB RT rental to ABQ-LBB (and gotten to my hotel significantly sooner than by waiting for my hours later ABQ-LBB flight), the rate itself jumped to something astronomical (several hundred dollars more on a three-day rental, while my original price was well under $100), so I decided to just hang out at ABQ after all (without looking to see whether I'd charged mileage on top of the ridiculous jump in rate) and leave my reservation as it was (except for updating to the new arrival flight).

This was a pickup at TUL and drop off at MCI

It's not good to generalize: Avis charges one-way mileage fees! Or, Hertz now charges one-way mileage fees! It is usually a provision of your corporate contract, which does not apply to the average retail renter.

The daily retail rates with unlimited miles are much higher than roundtrip. A mileage charge on a flat rate corporate plan may be cheaper for short distance, long time rentals.

There is a bug in the Avis computer system regarding pay now rates for one-ways. The total can actually be higher, because a separate taxable "one-way fee" is often added.