CMK10

Last Friday I flew into AUA from MIA. Our flight was delayed 35 minutes out of MIA and then it took a while to get through customs at AUA. We had a reservation for 9 PM and ended up getting to the Thrifty office at 9:50 PM. Rental cars at AUA are picked up across the street from the terminal, each company has a small hut they do their business out of. We got to the Thrifty hut which had a locked door and the lights off. I knocked and a woman came out and I said we had a reservation. She told me "oh, you should have called, I'm waiting to go home now" and refused to rent us a car. Their closing hours are posted at 10 PM and we arrived just before it. We ended up having to walk to Avis and pay $65 more than we would have at Thrifty.

I've been in contact with Thrifty on Twitter and we'll see what happens there.

BugsyPal

Cannot speak for Thrifty but National, Alamo and Enterprise clearly state locations "close" for pick-up/return purposes fifteen minutes before the official closing time. That is if the place closes at 7PM you need to be there before 645PM. Suppose if someone is still in the office after that time they can or will process; but that may or may not be possible especially if they have closed out and shut down the computers.

That being said the counter rep was correct, you should have reached out to the location and let them know about the delay. How are they supposed to know otherwise that you are merely late instead of not showing up at all?

Like retail stores car rental locations, banks, etc... car rental places have certain end of day reports to generate and then computers must be shut down. Once that process has started they cannot simply stop or reboot IIRC.

However if you had telephoned ahead of time they could have started the paperwork and had things ready before you arrived. This way they could complete the rental and still get out on time or a few minutes late.

CMK10

In my defense, I was in a foreign country where my cell phone did not work, nor are you allowed to use it in the customs area at AUA.

Also, I used to work for the Enterprise at the Phoenix Airport, we stayed until exactly Midnight and there were times when I would see people hurrying down the escalators towards are booth at 12:01 and we'd still stay to help them out.

cestmoi123

Because they presumably knew what flight he was on, and that it was running late, so that he would be running late as well.

I've never heard of the "we're open until 8PM, but really only until 7:45PM" concept for a rental company, but I'll take your word for it.

To me, open until 10PM means open until 10PM. Lock the door at 10:00:00 and start the shutdown process, sure, but not before.

CMK10

This is the AA from MIA flight, I imagine I couldn't have been the only one on it with a reservation, I think it's one of the last scheduled arrivals that night. I did have my flight information in my reservation as well. What I don't understand is, doesn't Thrifty want money? May is hardly Aruba's high season, by refusing to rent to me they miss out on a rental which hurts their numbers. Speaking as someone who used to work in the rental car industry including at an airport, it made very little sense to me.

BugsyPal

National changed their website some time ago to reflect the fifteen minutes before; Enterprise still shows *7PM* or whatever closing time, but if you contact them and or when you reach reservation confirmation page it shows the same.

CMK10

The Thrifty website for AUA shows 10 PM, if they want that to actually mean 9:45 then the website should be changed to reflect it, otherwise they should have rented me the car.