Avis - Has the return grace period vanished?

Apologies if this has been posted before, search didn't find it for me.

I just finished a one day Avis rental at BUR. When I rented, I knew it would be close to 24 hours, so I asked if the "grace period" that a return could be late was still 29 minutes.

The answer was no, it had been reduced to zero. The daily rental rate was $50 (plus taxes and fees), the cost for being one hour late was about $39!

Is this agent statement erroneous? If not, is it universal now to have no grace period, and is the same true at other majors?

Wirelessly posted (Blackberry8700c: BlackBerry9630/4.7.1.40 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

I noticed this as well at LAX. I was able to get a service credit to cover the cost of the overage but I still got stuck for the tax on it since the credit was handled as a separate transaction. Now I find myself booking way over my anticipated return time, at least if I'm returning in below a 24 hour increment in the rental period.

Wirelessly posted (Blackberry8700c: BlackBerry9630/4.7.1.40 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)
Now I find myself booking way over my anticipated return time, at least if I'm returning in below a 24 hour increment in the rental period.

They tried to hit me with "late fees" when I returned the car ~4-5 hours late, twice, when I was still within the 24-hr period when a new "day" would start. So now, I just book everything in 24 hour increments. If there's a chance that I'll stay later than my usual 4-days, I'll book for a month & return it in 5-6 days. There has never been an "early fee", so I'll just book the crap out of their system and give it back whenever I feel like it.

There has never been an "early fee", so I'll just book the crap out of their system and give it back whenever I feel like it.

Don't give them any ideas!!!!

I was always under the impression there was a grace period, but come to think of it, never have been on line where it mattered.

Good idea to just book a longer rental and return early.

Booking a longer rental and returning early makes no sense at all to me as a "strategy" to get around this charge -- it allows them to reprice the daily charge which could go up dramatically. They were perfectly willing to keep my daily rate if I was more than one hour late.

The question is, given that the timestamp out is not exact and often reflects when I get the rental agreement rather than when I leave the lot, why shouldn't they be required to have a reasonable grace period?

The question is, given that the timestamp out is not exact and often reflects when I get the rental agreement rather than when I leave the lot, why shouldn't they be required to have a reasonable grace period?

Avis might argue that the rental starts when the rental agreement is issued (or whenever your reservation started, whatever is earlier) and not when you leave the lot. This of course only works if you actually go to a counter to get the rental agreement and not if it has been issued hours before and is waiting in your car.

In my recent experience, my Avis First rentals have had the _starting_ rental time rounded ahead in my favor. This doesn't offset the return time, however.

I agree with the poster who books the longest time they could possibly have the car and simply return early. The only danger of this if it brackets a weekend (or other promotional period) and a special rate gets repriced as a full rate when turned in early.

Booking a longer rental and returning early makes no sense at all to me as a "strategy" to get around this charge -- it allows them to reprice the daily charge which could go up dramatically. They were perfectly willing to keep my daily rate if I was more than one hour late.

The question is, given that the timestamp out is not exact and often reflects when I get the rental agreement rather than when I leave the lot, why shouldn't they be required to have a reasonable grace period?

Richard - my point being that if I'm already booking for say 2 days 4 hours, it's almost always a better deal to just book for 3 full days. Obviously compare the two charges, but it's usually the same when you're booking online in my experience. The hourly rates are high enough when you book more than 1 hour over, it is usually cheaper to pay the day rate, which it practically does, but doesn't give you any overage. Thus you can have a car for 2 days, 6 hours and wind up paying for the equivalent of four days (since you're paying for the third day but only using 4 hours, plus then getting dinged for two hours at the hourly rate, which are close to another day's cost).
In this case, you can usually be made whole by the manager, but it's not desirable if you're in a rush to the terminal.

Thus you can have a car for 2 days, 6 hours and wind up paying for the equivalent of four days (since you're paying for the third day but only using 4 hours, plus then getting dinged for two hours at the hourly rate, which are close to another day's cost).


I have never seen this, not from Avis nor any other rental agency. Two days + six hours is charged as three days, whether reserved as 2 + 4 hours and returned two hours late, or booked as 2 + 6 hours.

Today, I got an email from Avis customer service stating that the U.S. domestic grace period was 29 minutes. I have emailed back asking if what I was told was unique to that one station (BUR) or an error by the counter agent.

I was just told upon returning at MXP that it's "un'ora" there. (In fact he then said, "One hour, two hours, today, whenever," because there was an accident between Milano and the airport. Never heard THAT before. Must have been a pleasant surprise to those caught in it when they finally turned up. Blessedly, I came in from the west.) I didn't even cross into it as I hadn't asked when I picked it up. All my other rentals of late - domestic - at all agencies including Avis have been 30 minutes, except Dollar, which is now 15 minutes, I think.

If this aspect is very important to you, remember the special value of being a Hertz #1 Club Gold. @:-)

I was at an airport recently with a 2 day, 2 hr rental, which priced out as a 3 day rental. I used a coupon for "3rd day free" and returned the car 2 days & 1:50 after the time out. The system charged me for 2 days and 1 hour, which invalidated the coupon. Dunno why, but it worked against me in this scenario.

I was at an airport recently with a 2 day, 2 hr rental, which priced out as a 3 day rental. I used a coupon for "3rd day free" and returned the car 2 days & 1:50 after the time out. The system charged me for 2 days and 1 hour, which invalidated the coupon. Dunno why, but it worked against me in this scenario.

this is the kind of thing that I had to hash out as a manager all the time. many coupons, esp weekend coupons have pickup and drop off times that are specific. for example (bear with me its been a while since Ive seen one) some of the weekend coupons required a pickup by, for example, no later than Saturday 1159pm and returned no later than Tuesday noon to qualify as a weekend coupon. The coupons will say the pickup and drop off requirements.

as silly as it seems, 2 days and 1 hour isn't three days. Granted i left Avis when the grace was still 59 minutes, but back then the billing system had to bill for "three days" for the coupon to kick in, ergo minimum 2 days and however many hours it takes in order for the hourly rate to overtake the daily rate. So if the hourly rate was 15 dollars an hour for overage (after grace, check your contract every contract has an hourly rate, even the preferred, avis first, chm and pres club guys), and your daily rate was 30 dollars (which is entirely possible) then the system would see it as a two day plus overage for one hour, yet see it as a three day rental after 2 days and 2 hours. Cant account for the 1:50 overage in your scenario, but its probably something similar.

Typically, a manager or a customer oriented agent cant see the logic in this and fix it. Frankly, as I keep saying, every agent in the company has the power through empowerment guidelines to make that correction (unless things changed in the past years since i left). If the agent was smart, they would just ad one hour to the bill which would kick the coupon into effect and it wouldn't show up on any price adjustment reports anywhere. But this kind of price correction isn't for the "average" agents to spot, so likely they would have, or should have, just changed the "return time" to make it exactly 2 days, also saving you the daily taxes at whatever airport you are at, which can be substantial. remember with the free day your still responsible for the daily taxes and concession fees. so either way would be acceptable, and as a manager i would have had no issues with my agents doing this, except to let me know if it was becoming a larger issue (happening 50-70 times a day) which Never happens.

Now, truly, the ultimate goal is to have a company that gets all of this stuff right from the get go, but even so, you have to admit the flyertalk community level of travelers usually is a bit more demanding, articulate, and litigious in its dealings with travel situations than the average traveling public, so in the millions of annual transactions, situations like this come up less than 1 percent of the time. I can cite just as many errors in billing with hertz and even more with thrifty, so its not unique to any one carrier. i will add a saying that I always use:

"where you work, where you live, and where you play effects your view on the situation you are dealing with, mainly because your point of view will always differ from someone else doing the same thing but in a different location."


im sure someone who doesn't know my history with avis and why i am here doing this will flame me as being a company "homer" or a company clone, but get your duckies correct, cause I'm not. I'm just telling it like it is and the long timers know that about me.

Avis might argue that the rental starts when the rental agreement is issued (or whenever your reservation started, whatever is earlier) and not when you leave the lot. This of course only works if you actually go to a counter to get the rental agreement and not if it has been issued hours before and is waiting in your car.

your assumption is correct. Avis often issues contracts hours in advance for those set up to do so. The pickup time (its been years, so forgive me) is usually the time you requested it, or if you inputted a flight number, 30-50 (somewhere around there) minutes after your fight is scheduled to land. now if your airport has the automated system set up, it spits out the contracts when your flight ACTUALLY lands. all airports have it, but only the busiest use that system.

When on a preprinted contract, its always advisable to do a reality check of when the contract stipulates your pickup time is. Granted, knowledgeable agents can correct it for you on the spot, but usually you have to bring it to their attention. Also, the gate guards provide (at some airports) positive logging of your actual time you drive off the lot, but it still ends up being a manual process to update the pickup time. The last time I used avis (avis not budget) was in Hawaii. I flew into HNL and they had an agent in the parking lot who hand wrote the time on the stub end of the preprinted contract. I noticed the time (as I always do) and saw the time updated to the minute on my checkout printout. so I know that some places take this stuff seriously.

But once again, this can work against you as IAH traveler pointed out, so its a good thing to be acquainted with whatever coupon and your current booked rate, esp when dealing with flight delays which make you cross the two "barriers". The barriers are midnight and noon. If flight delays cause you to pick up after midnight, pay attention, as well as outbound delays cause you to return it after noon when you are on a coupon and scheduled by reservation to return before noon.

Having worked for a rental car company, i read every last detail on the most important stuff on every contract. pick up time, drop off time, daily rate, hourly rate, weekly rate if applicable, and the fine print on all coupons.

Booking a longer rental and returning early makes no sense at all to me as a "strategy" to get around this charge -- it allows them to reprice the daily charge which could go up dramatically. They were perfectly willing to keep my daily rate if I was more than one hour late.

The question is, given that the timestamp out is not exact and often reflects when I get the rental agreement rather than when I leave the lot, why shouldn't they be required to have a reasonable grace period?

there is no strategy to avoid hourly fees except returning your car on time. people are under the mistaken impression that car rental contracts are some sort of negotiated entity that allows for some sort of grace period or else the rental company can charge you whatever you want.

here is the truth for those who may not quite know how this works.

when they quote you a price, its always an estimate. Its an estimate based on what information you gave them (pick up/drop off, airport). the estimate is based on a particular rate code. The rate code is derived by the computer to search for the best possible rate based on the information that you gave them. Some rates are good for only 99 hours and if you estimate your total time you own the car is going to be less than 99 hours, then the computer thinks THAT rate is the best for you. But if you were to estimate 100 hours, that puts you in the weekly rate category, and it searches weekly rates for the best possible based on what information you gave them (including discount codes and such)

They give you a daily rate, a weekly rate, and an hourly rate in most circumstances, and it will look something similar to this:

hourly 14.33
daily 35.99
Weekly 169.99
(occasionally, they will have date and time restrictions here as well, based on the rate code you were selected for, once again based on the information you gave)

(forgive me, the prices are not to scale, just made up for demonstration).


now, day of pickup, you pick up the car at 113pm. assuming no time and date restrictions and using the above scale, you can EXACTLY predict your total rental cost regardless of how long you keep the car, one hour or 29 days, based on the above information, when you consider the 29 minute grace.

now, quickly, grace period is the 29 minute period after each billable segment that is not billed. so if you go over two days by 31 minutes, you can technically keep the car for another 59 minutes (or 29 minutes after the full billed hour you already incurred) and your charges will be the same regardless of when you return the car as long as its within the first 29 minutes of the second hour. (confusing i know, so i will mathematically demonstrate)

Keep the car until two days later at 113, you will pay 35.99*2 plus fees and taxes. (car within the grace period of first hour)

Keep the car until two days later at 144, you pay 35.99*2 plus 1 hour at 14.33 plus taxes and fees. (billed 1 hour, car returned 2 min past grace)

keep the car until two days later at 215, you pay 35.99*2 plus 1 hour at 14.33 plus taxes and fees. (billed 1 hour, car returned after billed hour but during the second 29 min grace period)

keep the car until two days later at 242, you pay 35.99*2 plus 1 hour at 14.33 plus taxes and fees. (billed 1 hour, car returned after billed hour but during the second 29 min grace period)

keep the car until two days later at 245, you pay 35.99*2 plus 2 hours at 14.33 plus taxes and fees. (billed 2 hours, car returned after billed hour and beyond the second hour's grace period)

the above scale is somewhat smart. if the hourly rate exceeds the daily rate (i.e. the 14.33*number of hours exceeds 35.99), it charges you the daily rate. if the daily rate exceeds the weekly rate, your charged the weekly rate.

now this forumula can be used perfectly to figure out your bill. But one thing you need to take into account is that when you cross the day threshold and are billed for, like in our example, 2 days and 1 hour, many locations by law are required to charge you full day's fees and taxes. so that hour might actually cost more than 35.99 when you take into account road tax per day, concession fees per day, airport lot fee or whatever else fees that are triggered by daily rental cost not by percentage of bill. Those fees are sickly pissy to get, but are not under any control of the rental agency as those are due to the local authority, wherever that may be. the only way to avoid those is to return the car less than the grace period or before you estimated your pickup time.

so all rental companies use this same formula to determine the cost of your rental. I could go more into the "rate code" description of how things work, but for this purpose current will suffice.

So changing the pickup time and drop off time will not be an effective strategy for stopping hourly fees. Regardless of when or where you pick up the car, the fee schedule is set, and in writing in front of you, to adjust on your own.

Given my inside knowledge, I always modify rental times by 5-10-15-20 1hr 2hrs sometimes more when I am searching for the best rate. It doesnt take long to do so and many flyertalkers do that anyway with discount codes so its nothing new.

My reason for checking the different times is to see if the rental computer (reservation wizard as its called in avis parlance) will give me a better rate or a different rate code with better terms. So if i tell the rental system im renting a car for 99 hours and my rate code says 99 hours max, i put in a reservation for 100 hours to see the next rate code up and the price difference. if the price jumps too much (i.e. for me more than 5 bucks) i would take my sweet time getting my bags. stop and hit the head, maybe buy a soda, adjust my mirrors on the car, check to make sure the gas is full AND make sure THE AGENT PUTS THE CORRECT PICKUP TIME not just on my contract but into the system.

But thats just me.

ezmonee, Brilliant. Just Brilliant.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

:-::-::-::-::-: