chebraccia

Preferred customer, reserved with avis in PIT and put in flight arrival info knowing it's close and I might come in late.. scheduled arrival was 12:55am they're officially open til 1:30am.

We were delayed and arrived 2:20am. No one was at the avis counter, I saw our minivan waiting was first in line, but guess the worker was getting tired..

I called avis, they transferred me to some "special desk" and they said that each rental location has different policies.. I said don't you advertise you will stay open for late flights, they said some locations do...

Nothing else..

Ended up having to take a $75 taxi, and now need to take the same back to the airport..

Is this pretty much what is to be expected of Avis's policy?

IAHtraveler

If you're going to be delayed near/past closing time, I'd highly recommend calling the station or HQ (if you cannot reach anyone at the station) to let them know you're still coming. It's just a good insurance policy so they know you're really coming and not going to swap flights and come in the next day. Also, if they say they won't stay up late, it should give you a bit of time to find alternative transportation before getting there and being stuck.

jackal

Seconded. How do they know you'll really show up? Maybe you have a reservation at another company and Avis is your backup. Maybe you canceled your trip and didn't bother canceling your Avis reservation because you knew there wouldn't be a no-show fee. Maybe you made the reservation speculatively for a potential trip but never actually intended to come. Maybe the airline bumped you off your flight and you'll be arriving the next day.

In all of those cases, it makes no sense for someone to stay an hour past close for you only to not have you show up. The rental agent just wants to go home and go to sleep (maybe he has a second job they have to wake up for early, or maybe she has an 8:00am college class to attend), and the company doesn't want to pay overtime when there's a 30% chance (yes, the no-show rate is that high) that the person won't even show up--especially if the hour of overtime costs $20 but the person is on a $15 weekend rate (there's no incentive to pay someone to stick around even if the customer shows up!). Stick a salaried manager out there to avoid overtime? If I were that person, I sure wouldn't want to stay for an extra unpaid hour unless I had some assurance that the customer plans on showing up.

What I can guarantee works: call the location directly and promise you'll run right over to the counter as soon as you land, even before picking up baggage. If they say no, tell the agent you'll gladly give them your Starbucks gift card. If you don't have one, mention that you're likely to want to buy something like coverage, gas, or an upgrade (you probably should follow through with that, but you don't really have to). Rental agents are salespeople at heart and respond well to bribes.

Often1

The alternative is for auto rental companies to require a guarantee and I'd suspect that 99% of the time you don't want that. In other words, nothing really happens to you if you have a reservation and no show.

If you didn't proactively let the counter know that you were coming, why would they stay?

LoganFlyer

+1. I did this at SCE Avis once when my flight scheduled to land at 11:00 PM got delayed until 1 AM. I called and the employee told me it was their policy to wait for the last flight as long as they knew someone was coming from it. I'm not sure she would have stayed if I hadn't called. (Luckily, I didn't have to invoke a bribe ).

zdave

Avis at PGV stayed an extra hour and a half for me without calling. Guess I was lucky. As PGV only has a few flights, we were definitely the last ones in.

chaimdan

I think they should still stay open... if they advertise this without saying anything about having to call in

sdsearch

If you entered the flight you'll be on well ahead of time and it never changed, maybe you don't need to call (though I don't see how it can hurt).

But if you changed the flight at the last minute, remember, they don't know that. Even if you enter it on the Avis website, they may have pulled the records for the car already by that point, and in that case they don't see the update you did online. So definitely if your flight changed the day of flying, I would recommend contacting the office directly.

I was on a late BWI-BUF flight on June 1, which was a day where there had been tornado watches in Maryland earlier which had cancelled a bunhc of flights, including an earlier BWI-BUF. My BWI-BUF flight was delayed (and set to arrive just past closing time as it finally went out). I had called Avis (central) and asked them about it. But on the plane I talked to people who had been booked on the earlier flight (that was cancelled), had been rebooked (by the airline) onto my flight, but had never contacted their rental car office to let them know about this change, and just "assumed" that the rental car office would stay open for the last plane.

IMHO that's reaching. If your flight changes, and you want to be sure the rental place will stay open, doesn't it make sense to call them? How can they know whether you got on a later plane that night or went back home???

jackal

Those are the people who typically arrive surprised to find they aren't getting a car.

I once heard a lady say to her husband, "Gee, we called the hotel to let them know we'd be late, but we didn't think to call the car rental company." Unfortunately, most people have the similar mindset that the car rental is the least important component of the travel plans (no financial interest vested in it, since there's no threat of a no-show or cancellation fee).

Even if you entered your flight information, I would call anyway if your flight is going to arrive after closing time. It is not a completely safe assumption that they will stay open for you based on that. (It is nice if they do, but unless you are prepared to test whether it's true and be willing to have to wait until the following day to pick up your car if they don't, it's better not to be a guinea pig for that assumption.)