wintermom

I booked my car at a great rate in Maui and have just now booked my
interisland flight from LIH to OGG. On my reservation to pick up the car
I listed 11:30 am. I got a much better rate on a flight that arrives at 5:30
so I booked that. However when I tried to modify my great rate for a later
pickup time the rate goes up by several $100's (I either got a mistake or
promotion rate that I can't alter). I don't need to adjust the drop off time
so I would just be picking up the car 6 hours later. Will they cancel it?

FlyforSAP

It has been my experience that Hertz and others allow a 2 hour window if you don't call. On the day of your flight you might try calling saying you were IDB and will be arriving later. It might work. I don't know if Maui has different polices or you are with another car rental company?

wintermom

This is my first experience renting from Dollar so I have no status with them.
I can call that day, no problem but I don't know if that will work.
I don't want to loose my great rate, but of course I don't want to pay
an extra $160 for three airline tickets to arrive at an earlier time

wintermom

Just as an update, didn't want to chance loosing my great rate by showing
up 6+ hours late. I called Hawaiian Air and since I had booked the flight
just a few hours earlier they let me change it for no change fee.
Very, very helpful!! We have to get early to catch a much earlier flight
but there was only an $11.00 per person fare increase. To keep my rental
car for 5 nights at $69.00 total price its worth getting up early on a vacation
day.

jackal

Glad to hear it worked out.

Technically, Dollar has a nationwide policy of holding reservations for 2 hours before no-showing/cancelling them at suburban locations...and for 6 hours at airport locations.

Any variation in this policy should be noted in the reservation terms and conditions.

Still, if you had not been able to change your flights and you had not wanted to chance it, you should have been able to call a Dollar reservations sales agent (800-800-4000) and have them manually override the rate change when changing the pickup time within the same day (which is also official policy). Now that the callcenter has been outsourced to Jakarta, though, you may not find that avenue successful, though it might be worth asking to speak to a supervisor.

The third way of doing this is to try to contact the location directly, since they can modify the pickup time in their system (which is not tied into the reservations system and therefore should not trigger a rerate). Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible to find the phone number for corporate-owned stores (which I believe OGG is), since Dollar seems to like to dump all calls to the cheaper outsourced callcenter rather than staffing up individual locations to take phone calls (in phone books and on the website, they usually just publish the main 800 number). Still, with some Google sleuthing, it is often possible to locate the direct number (also look in your reservation's terms and conditions for a local number to call for shuttle pickup--that will often be the way to reach the counter staff directly).

As for the 6-hour no-show policy, I'm not sure that it's in writing on the web, so I'd be hesitant to rely on it unless you can find written proof.

Tuneman1984

What about for Dollar Express members? I know that Thrifty Bluechip folks have their reservations held until midnight or the location's closing time, whichever is earlier.

jackal

Uhh...if I didn't have about 50 more threads to finish reading before I have to go in a couple of hours, I might sit around and do some research on this...

I'd assume it's the same, but then again, Express doesn't share the Blue Chip free day satisfaction guarantee. Still, it seems the programs are identical in every other respect.

Did I hear that locations were granted permission to shorten the no-show time for Blue Chip members, though? I'll have to do some research on that, too...