Thrifty - Extra day / late fees? (not mentioned in conf)

Anybody know what sort of extra day and/or late fees Thrifty charges?

Back in early Feb I made a reservation at DEN, 14-Aug p/u. For five days I'm paying the "weekly rate" of $142.45. When SWA released their 15-Aug to 30-Oct schedule I decided I'd like to make the trip a few days longer. The weekly rate for the same car type/pickup date is now over $394 :eek: There is a "hot deal" (promo code 463) that brings the rate a few dollars below the AX10 10% off rate, but that still makes a one week rental $450 AI versus $173 when I booked in early February. (Weird: the total goes down to $394 to book eight days instead of seven.)

Ideally I'd like to just pay a "late return" fee to be able to keep the car six or seven days instead of the five originally reserved (seeing as my rate was good for up to a full week). My guess is that will never happen, but I'd love to hear whether anyone has had luck with that approach.

The next best option would be to pay a "reasonable" extra day fee (based on the extra day that existed when the reservation was made) but I cannot find any mention of an extra day in my confirmation Email or when viewing the reservation online.

Any information from past experiences?

If an "extra day" fee isn't mentioned in your reservation, your rate probably doesn't have one.

You can always call and ask the phone agent to verify your current rate plan and see if extra days are a higher rate.

Extra day differences are usually between $5-20, so even at a $20-per-day difference, it looks like you'd still be well under the current rebooked rate. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Thanks for the reply. The $5 to $20 penalty that you describe is what I suspected Thrifty would not actually allow. My guess was that they would probably charge a rate of $40+ per day, plus any penalty.

I've run sidestep searches quite a few times since the OP, and lucked out today; I rebooked an 8-day rental that was $393.55 to $219.41! I did have to make one change: indicate an arrival time of 5:30pm instead of 5:00pm. The dropoff time is also 5:00pm, so it is still a rental of 8 x 24 hours. I'm well aware that pickup/dropoff times can have a big impact on rates due to qualification for weekend rates and other specials, but this 44.25% savings on an 8 day rental just for changing from a 5:00 pickup to a 5:30 pickup blows my mind! And it isn't just Thrifty, sidestep finds similar rate differentials for numerous car companies with a 5pm versus 6pm rental start time change. (That site only offers pickup times on the hour.)

BTW, if you notice the numbers between my two posts don't jive well, it is because they are for different car classes. The reservation I changed is for a compact ("Caliber or similar") versus the Wild Car reservation made back in February.

I've run sidestep searches quite a few times since the OP, and lucked out today; I rebooked an 8-day rental that was $393.55 to $219.41! I did have to make one change: indicate an arrival time of 5:30pm instead of 5:00pm. The dropoff time is also 5:00pm, so it is still a rental of 8 x 24 hours. I'm well aware that pickup/dropoff times can have a big impact on rates due to qualification for weekend rates and other specials, but this 44.25% savings on an 8 day rental just for changing from a 5:00 pickup to a 5:30 pickup blows my mind! And it isn't just Thrifty, sidestep finds similar rate differentials for numerous car companies with a 5pm versus 6pm rental start time change. (That site only offers pickup times on the hour.).

It is a common practice in the rental pricing industry to try to hide lower prices from competitors by artificially inflating rates for bookings in multiples of 24 hours. Since most people don't return at exactly the same time they rent, they figure they can offer lower prices on rentals of 32, 64.5, 93.75, etc. hours while fooling their competitors into keeping their prices high (most rate shopping software usually tests straight 24, 48, 72, 96, etc. hour rentals). That may very well be the cause of your major difference.