Yes, in travel industry parlance, this is called "walking the customer". We've certainly heard of other situations with lesser companies where the customer is just told "tough luck--you're on your own". It actually happened to me with Thrifty in Cancun once when I was about 45 min late, but I didn't care since I had a backup reservation with National. All in all, you made out OK here, so probably best to consider it a win.