Originally Posted by
Adstring
Hello,
I booked an Avis car in Vancouver through BA. To cut a long story short, I booked it for a 9am pick up, 9am drop off but we now need to change that to 2pm pick up, 2pm drop up.
BA want to charge me a £25 change fee and some difference in fees.
If I pop in to the Avis desk at the original time, what are the changes of them letting me adjust the time without fees? It's still for the same duration....
But the problem is that rates change all the time, and changing it to both a new pick up time
and a new drop off time requires repricing it.
If you were only changing the collection time (as your thread title implied), there would be no extra charge; you'd simply notify them that you're going to be late, and please hold your car until 2 pm. End of story.
It's because you're also changing the drop off time that it all has to be repriced.
Same duration has nothing to do with it. Rental cars are not priced per duration
only.
Being late to pick up a rental is common, and it doesn't add to your drop off time, so the rental company doesn't mind much.
Changing your drop off time affects their availability for other customers on the day of drop off, so they mind that much more.
... Meanwhile, if you watch rates at Avis.com, you'll often find that the rate goes up and down and up and down from day to day to day. I save tons of money by repricing ("modify your reservation") when the price goes down. But if you make the choice to change something about your reservation when the price has gone up, you have to reprice at the rate that's in effect when you make the change. (However, Avis.com wouldn't charge you a £25 change fee on top of that; that problem you have because you booked through BA, rather than booking through Avis itself. If you have to pay £25
every time you reprice, you also can't use my trick of checking the rate every couple days, especially in the last two weeks before your pick-up, and seeing if it goes down and the repricing.)