Originally Posted by
Red Scorpion
It's a fine line between optimising the yield by having as many of your cars out earning rental income and not actually running out and adversely affecting your customer service, and as others have said, I guess it is inevitable that there will be occasions when it all goes wrong and the situation the OP articulated does occur.
I have to say that it is not helped when you get people who make reservations, and then in a fit of pique cancel them in real time and walk across to another provider. There are plenty of people on here who admit to doing this. Rental car companies will no doubt plan for a certain percentage of reservations to go away, so when they don't, I guess they find themselves out of cars, just like when the airlines overbook and they run out of seats.
I think hotels are a better analogy than airlines. You can't overstay an airline flight (except perhaps on point-to-point-to-point-to-point Southwest!). However, someone already staying in hotel can ask to extend their stay. If enough of that happens, that can push some people arriving after that to be "walked".
Well, just like at a hotel, a car may not be returned when originally scheduled. Your reservation was based on (some formula based on) when the cars already out were scheduled to be returned.
But unlike a hotel, the rental car company doesn't even necessarily have the option of kicking you out of the room ("no, you can't extend your stay"). The hotel has physical possession of the room, but the car rental facility does not have physical possesion of cars that are out with customers. So it's harder for a rental car company to "yank" a car back from a customer (who's late in returning) the way a hotel at least in theory could "yank" a room from a customer who's overstayed their reservation.