Dollar - Dollar at BNA airport

My scheduled arrival time at BNA on Frontier from DEN is 11.59pm.

I am advised by central Dollar Customer Services that the location closes at midnight.

I will have made a reservation for the rental from England - so the Dollar location 'should' have it on their system.

Will they remain open until I have had time to deplane, collect baggage and get to their desk ?

(my last experience of car rental in Tn was Dec 2007 when my UA ORD-MEM flight was delayed, cancelled, then I was switched to AA because of snow - eventually got to MEM at 01.45 - no car desks, no cabs, no hotel shuttles, no nothing - so I slept on a bench until car rentals opened again at 05.30. I really would like to avoid that again :eek:;)

Any observations appreciated.

Thanks.

...a car rental agent will stay late past closing is if the reservation is guaranteed with a credit card. There is probably some time limit on that, too, but without that cc guarantee, you would be most likely be considered a noshow. They don't coordinate directly with the late arriving airline.

...a car rental agent will stay late past closing is if the reservation is guaranteed with a credit card. There is probably some time limit on that, too, but without that cc guarantee, you would be most likely be considered a noshow. They don't coordinate directly with the late arriving airline.


Thanks jan_believes - my reservation would be entirely prepaid in England - and is non-refundable - so they would be guaranteed getting their money.

I will also be flying into BNA a week earlier from ORD, so I will check at the location on that date when I collect the car.. and alert them to my 2nd reservation, arriving from DEN.

Will they remain open until I have had time to deplane, collect baggage and get to their desk ?
Most likely, no. Dollar does not take credit card deposits, so all customers who do not arrive by the closing time are considered no-shows, and it's silly to wait for people who most likely will never show up. Yours may be a pre-paid voucher, but as Dollar locations see those pretty rarely, they may not even notice that yours is different than anyone else's (I'm pretty sure the reservation itself looks (almost) the same as any other reservation in the system), and the closing employee will likely not even realize that you've prepaid for your rental until you show up with the paper voucher.

You can enter your flight details when booking at dollar.com (not sure about dollar.co.uk), but in practice, it's too difficult to look these up for every single delayed person or no-show. (The no-show percentage typically ranges from 9-15%.) At best, by entering your flight information, if the agency tries to consider you a no-show and is sold out when you arrive, you can argue with customer service that because they knew flight was late, they should pay the difference for a car from another company or make other arrangements convenient for you.

Your best bet is to call the location specifically, preferably even the specific shift that will be working when you arrive, and asking them if they would be able to stay the extra half-hour or whatever as a one-time favor for you. Hopefully, you get an agent who values customer service and doesn't mind staying an extra half hour at the end of a crazy 10-hour shift or has to be to work at a second job at 8am the next morning.

Normally, to better your chances that they'd say yes, I would suggest enticing the agent by telling them you'd do something like buy a tank of prepaid fuel or buy LDW, but since your voucher already includes those items at no cost and at no commission incentive for the agent, that wouldn't work. It might help that you're renting the week before--if you ask them then, it's a lot harder for them to say no to you in person... (Maybe if they waffle about it, you could ask them if you can bring them anything like a $5 Starbucks gift card or a good chocolate bar from England or something to make it worth their while! If I were in your place, I'd spend $5 to avoid sleeping on a bench in the concourse!)

Thanks jackal for your comprehensive thoughts.

I just received confirmation from Dollar central customer services that 'The location has someone wait until the last flight arrives' - though of course YMMV .......:rolleyes:

As my pick up one week earlier at Dollar BNA will be around 9.30pm, I guess there is a chance that it will be the same shift representative as my later pick up at around midnight - so I WILL take the opportunity to mention the 2nd rental. On a few previous occasions renting Dollar at BNA I have always found the reps very chatty and have had an easy rapport with them.

Thanks again to both for your input.