aquos

Have been using Avis for the past few years. Job involves nation-wide travel 5 days a week. If I finish with a client on Tuesday afternoon, I have to drive to the airport and wait to find out if I'm hopping on a plane.. sometimes with no more than an hour notice. Job assignments are given out in part with regard to your ability to get to a given location. If I'm within a few hours of the next job, they'll have me drive.. which often puts me closer to a different airport for the return. Or, I might fly into a small regional airport on Sunday evening (when everything is planned out on Friday), but if my client cancels Monday morning I'm better off driving a few hours to a major city where there are a lot more possibilities for outbound flights that evening.

My company just worked out a corporate deal with National, which we'll be required to use going forward. With the Avis AWD I've been using, there's no drop off charge, but I do pay a mileage fee on top of the rental. With clustered airports like around DC, Chicago and New York it's like returning to the originating location.

So, what I'm wondering, is what is likely to happen with National when this occurs? (One might think that this would be considered when negotiating with the rental co, but I don't have that much faith in our company.)

Doc Savage

You need to ask whoever negotiated the deal with National, obviously. There's often a big one-way drop off fee. If you put the rentals on a corporate card, it's a lot less hassle than if they force you to put it on your own card and get reimbursed, since you could rack up some big one-way charges. Best get the official word from your company's travel dudes/dudettes.

MADPhil

You obviously need to check your contract or start a dummy booking and see what happens. The contract I can use has no mileage limits and no explicit one way charge, though a modest charge is sometimes buried in the rental rate (check by doing a return to origin dummy). You may, however, need to make it explicit in the original booking. I have never needed to make that change during the booking.

B-HQC

I've found that within a certain distance, say a JFK-EWR, there is normally no additional charge. Anything further, and the reservation will be repriced - but the great thing about National (with our contract at least) is that you'll never be charged more than what it would have cost to book the one-way to begin with. Quite often, it turns out to be a fair bit less.

MADPhil

I don't know if it is still the case but there used to be a distinction between locally owned cars that had to be returned to the franchise and corporate owned cars that could be returned anywhere. If that is still the case then you would need one of the latter for maximum flexibility.

matrixca7

If you rent frequently from National you get "free rental" days. You can use them for one-way rentals and you only pay taxes and airport fees (around $8-$10).

Auto Enthusiast

I doubt the OP would want to redeem free days to save the company money on business travel. More likely use the free days for a personal one-way roadtrip in the warmer months.

zerolife

Yes National Car clusters too. So for example EWR, LGA as well as the city locations are all considered local and there is no extra charge regardless where you return.

However outside the cluster, it will be considered one-way and the rate is likely going to go up. If you have the contract code, you can plug it in & play around with it on National's website to see what the price differences are for one way vs same location return. Also, corporate contract may have both unlimited mileage or pay per miles for one way depending on what's negotiated.

ijgordon

Normally, your rental agreement specifies a pick-up and drop-off location. Deviating from those plans is effectively a breach of that contract, and could invalidate whatever rate you had, giving the agency effective carte blanche to charge you whatever they want.

I'd hope that your company has certainly negotiated something with National that provides additional flexibility.

cestmoi123

This may seem rude, but why do you care? The company's paying for the rentals, and the entity telling you where to go, aren't they?

ijgordon

I think that's a fair question, but the OP did mention that he didn't have any faith in his company. So if he gets hit with a huge, unexpected charge for deviating from the contract, maybe there's a chance they'll refuse to reimburse him and he's just trying to proactively avoid that type of situation.

noah

My experience is that on most Corporate IDs, national has no one-way fee, but does charge mileage. The daily rate stays the same. So, assuming yours is similar, you'd end up paying mileage (.26 or .30 cents a mile.. can't recall) if you change plans and drop off elsewhere.

NCLSEA123

Yeah our corporate rate has a higher daily rate on one ways, however economy through full size are priced the same with unlimited mileage. Once you reserve premium or above, it goes to a higher daily rate plus $0.40 a mile, but since I'm EE I can reserve premium at the same rate/terms as full size, and usually end up getting whatever I want.