Originally Posted by
Vladmir Golobovic
Hello,
I am creating this thread to check whether this actually works.
Let's suppose I rent a car on Friday, 2 pm, for exactly one day.
Therefore, I need to return the car by Saturday 2pm.
Considering that the rental business closes by Saturday 12 p.m., I would have to leave the car in front of the store, and use they key return box, as usual in after-hours return.
However, I realized something, the car would simply stay there until Monday, when staff would checkout the car for me.
My question is whether it is possible to keep the car over the weekend (until Sunday), and not get charged for this extra day? Is this a trick people use, or do companies have a way find that out. Some locations might have cameras, but I don't know if that's the case.
Your other fallacy is that you're assuming that since it the counter is officially closed according to the posted hours, that no one ever checks the cars in the lot.
I've seen rental locations which are closed in terms of the counter (per the posted hours) but down the road at the car washing bay there is someone working, and they are able to check cars in the lot even though they don't generally open the counter outside of the posted business hours.
Posted hours are for when customers should be able to
depend on the counter being open. That doesn't mean that once every few hours someone may not come and check the cars in the lot, especially if it's an employee who lives very nearby.
Oh, and gosh, couldn't they even possibly have video surveillance to verify when you returned your car?
But there's a much bigger worry you should have: If you return a car such that it sits open to the public for 24 hours before the office opens, if someone hits that car in the parking lot between the time you leave it and the time they open the office, how will you prove it wasn't you? So I'd wary of leaving a car unattended that long in a public lot. (If it's an enter-only lot specifically for the rental company, that would be much better.) At the very least, take extra documentation photos of the condition of the car at return time in such a case.