isle-hawg

I had a reservation for a 3 day compact rental for $117.51. I returned the car today - a day early and got the receipt for $381.15!!!! Did not have time to solve it then, since I had a plane to catch. Noticed on the receipt before leaving that there were no extra charges for gas, damage, etc. But the rate was "minimum charge" $285 prior to all the taxes and add on charges. Figured I could get this solved easy enough with a phone call to customer service. After 30 minutes on the phone with a customer service rep he reduced it to $168.65 and informed me after he supposedly confirmed with supervisors that I no longer qualified for the rate I booked it under since I changed the length of the contract (made it a 2 day rental vice 3).

For additional info this reservation was booked through DTS the system all military and govt employees are required to use for official travel (which this was).

Anybody here ever experience such a thing or make any sense of this? I can understand if it was not pro-rated for returning the car a day early but to charge almost 50% (or even a penny) more to return the car a day early seems completely unethical to me.

GenevaFlyer

Hi,

Whether this is ethical can be debated, however, it's an event that occurs regularly.

When you rented the car, you entered into an agreement to have it for 3 days, at a given price, based on the length of the rental. When you decided to not respect the minimum contract duration stipulated, your rate was repriced at the price of the day.

It's quite similar to a hotel reservation made for Thu-Sun, in order to get a Saturday night stay, dropping the rate to a weekend rate. You suddenly change the reservation and drop the Saturday night, it will be repriced at the going rate at the moment of changing the reservation.

Did your 3-day rental include a specific discount (i.e. 40% off a 3-day rental for example)? Suddenly, you no longer qualify for that discount, thus repricing the 2 days to a higher rate.

Yes, it's hard to justify why 2 days would be more expensive than 3 days, but on the other hand, the Avis location suddenly has a car back on their lot which they were not expecting. What does it do to their inventory management? If 100 people did the same as you, what would the impact be then?

We don't have insight into the terms of your 3-day rental contract, but by changing it, you change the terms & conditions, at the last minute, and thus last minute pricing kicks in.

Just some thoughts to consider.

Cheers,

GenevaFlyer

IAHtraveler

GenevaFlyer recapped it well. It falls back to businesses knowing what they can charge for a service/item, not what their actual cost is. Other comparisons:
-Does it cost an airline more to fly you AAA-CCC direct instead of AAA-BBB-CCC? Not typically, but they price it quite differently.
-Does it cost airlines more to fly you on a Monday vs. a Saturday?
-Why do airlines charge you to move to an earlier flight with open seats (thus opening seats on a later flight that can be sold)? Because they can.

If you book your cars through Avis.com, the rate terms will be shown on the right side during a page on the booking process (minimum/max days on the rental, Saturday night stay, etc). If those terms aren't met, then they default the rate to their choice. Personally, all car booking sites (Expedia, corporate programs, etc) should be required to post those terms but don't.

isle-hawg

I get the analogy that you used, but at least you know that upfront. The analogy I think that applies more is if you book a 4 night stay and check out a day early depending on canx policy you may or may not be liable for the 4th night anyway, but under no condition that I am aware of will they charge you for the equivalent of additional nights beyond the 4 that you booked for the price in the reservation.

The site I booked on does not show these details, it just pulls up all the choices and lists them in order of cost beginning with the cheapest first - which is what is required to be selected under most circumstances.

IAHtraveler

Yeah, that's a fallacy of nearly all 3rd party booking sites. It's something that needs to be modified, IMO.

isle-hawg

Well, it all worked out in the end for me this time. I was sent a customer satisfaction survey and made note of my dissatisfaction of begin charged more than what the contract was for. I received a response basically stating what you folks have written, but then he told me that he wanted to make it right and pro-rated my bill to $71. I would of been more than happy if he just charged me what was contracted, but pro-rating it was above and beyond what I expected.

I really do like renting with Avis, and have been using them whenever I can for the past 20 years. This was my first negative experience with them, but I am more than satisfied now.