Reserving a specific model well in-advance?

Old Dec 4, 2016, 4:52 pm
  #1  
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Reserving a specific model well in-advance?

Has anyone reserved a specific model? Would like to reserve an Escalade for mid March 2017 from a major international airport. Wanting to know if this is possible.
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Old Dec 4, 2016, 5:19 pm
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Don't want to sound rude: but have you tried booking it through Avis.com? Is it available then or any dates nearby? Agencies often don't list specific vehicles well in advance as one accident/high mileage trip could remove the vehicle from their fleet.
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Old Dec 5, 2016, 9:46 am
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At most locations, it is not possible (at least not online) to reserve a specific model.

Gosh, even when you reserve a specific car class, you often get a different class (hopefully higher) when you arrive.

The models listed on the website are typically just examples, and if you read the fine print you'll see so. Exceptions might be expensive premium cars, but I doubt an Escalade falls into that category.

And car rental companies often don't know their car mix well in advance (are they going to buy a whole new cars between now and when your rental occurs?), but near in they don't which exact cards are going to be returned on time. So now matter how far out, they might not know what exact cars will be on the lot at the hour you arrive.
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Old Dec 5, 2016, 9:50 am
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Originally Posted by IAHtraveler
Don't want to sound rude: but have you tried booking it through Avis.com? Is it available then or any dates nearby? Agencies often don't list specific vehicles well in advance as one accident/high mileage trip could remove the vehicle from their fleet.
I rent about 50 times a year. While I can rent a certain class such as SUV Specialty which includes the Lincoln Navigator, Cadillac Escalade, Infiniti QX80, I've never seen an option for requesting a specific model within a class. I honestly didn't know if this was possible.
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Old Dec 5, 2016, 10:10 am
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Originally Posted by sdsearch
At most locations, it is not possible (at least not online) to reserve a specific model.

Gosh, even when you reserve a specific car class, you often get a different class (hopefully higher) when you arrive.

The models listed on the website are typically just examples, and if you read the fine print you'll see so. Exceptions might be expensive premium cars, but I doubt an Escalade falls into that category.

And car rental companies often don't know their car mix well in advance (are they going to buy a whole new cars between now and when your rental occurs?), but near in they don't which exact cards are going to be returned on time. So now matter how far out, they might not know what exact cars will be on the lot at the hour you arrive.
I agree with you for standalone locations, but at larger airports such as IAH - Houston International, I wouldn't think it would be unreasonable to assume they have such a large flow of vehicles coming in and out, that they couldn't hold a specific vehicle.
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Old Dec 5, 2016, 4:12 pm
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Yes, reserving a specific vehicle is available sometimes. For instance, I often see the MB GL450 available at a few larger/southern locations, when booking on <24 hours notice. However, other than the MB, I haven't seen any specific large SUVs available for a specific model. Some sedans/cool cars are that way, but very few and far between as they don't know what will be on the lot (accidents/late returns/recalls/maintenance/etc cause cars unexpectedly to be out of the fleet).
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Old Dec 5, 2016, 7:13 pm
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Originally Posted by seethruya
I agree with you for standalone locations, but at larger airports such as IAH - Houston International, I wouldn't think it would be unreasonable to assume they have such a large flow of vehicles coming in and out, that they couldn't hold a specific vehicle.
But whether they "could" or not is not the right question.

It's whether they "would" or not (ie, pollicy, willingness, etc) that is the question. And the other question might be "at what cost".

See, to reserve a specific car, they might the go back days or even weeks before your pick up and make sure no one (who could possible extend their rental at the last minute) takes that car. Who's going to pay for the specific car sitting unused "reserved" just so you can be sure, days or weeks later, that it will really be available for you?

That's the logistics problem. These rental companies are not set up to allocate cars by specific model, they allocate cars by car type. And it's probably largely computer programs that do it. So either someone at corporate has to rewrite the computer program , or that particular location has to someone keep track of your rental manually (with all the additional work that it involves). and you're going to pay for one or the other of those, right?

So I was saying that in practice most locations don't seem to allow this for most types of vehicles. I wasn't saying if this should be possible or not, just what I've observed is possible. And so far everyone in this thread seems to have observed much the same thing.

Perhaps you're asking the question wrong? Instead of asking "can Avis reserve a specific car", perhaps you should be asking "can anyone do that"? Ie, I wonder if it might take a specialized car rental company (not one of the big nationwide ones) to offer such a service.

(But of course, if the question turned into that, it'd be more suitable for the general Car Rentals forum than for this Avis-specific forum.)

Last edited by sdsearch; Dec 5, 2016 at 7:19 pm
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Old Dec 10, 2016, 8:22 pm
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I've been able to get a specific car for a mini-lease multiple times at a major international airport location. They can pull a vehicle and hold it for you in the lot. But at a big airport location, even that isn't foolproof, as another agent may just rent it out, but in that case they sent someone to drive my desired vehicle when it became available the next day to swap it out with what I had.

I'd guess that if you have a long term relationship with the location or if you're making a high value rental its going to be more likely. Doesn't hurt to call the rental office and ask, they can at least tell you if they even have Escalades. I'd guess that whatever vehicle class an Escalade falls into isn't cheap and if you're renting it for sufficiently long (ie, spending enough money) they'll try to make you happy. Call during normal business hours, at some locations the overnight staff can be useless.
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Old Dec 14, 2016, 10:14 am
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If you want a Escalade just use Enterprise Exotics if they are at the airport you are flying to. If you had let us know the airport we could have checked for you. They normally have Escaldes and will guarantee the exact car you request.
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