Weird Avis.com Behavior - Impact to Reservation?
 

I am booking a car for family next weekend for a total of 5 days...when pricing out the reservation online, it appears to give me a daily rate for one day, to which taxes for the complete 5 days of the reservation period are added - so the resulting total is one day of charges + 5 days of taxes.

This occurs with or without a discount code or coupon.

The reservation rate detail shows the amount for "12 Hours", yet the pickup/dropoff times are correct, indicating 5 days.

I called reservations, and as expected, they were useless and passed me to customer service, who are closed....as is the web support desk.

They have no status with Avis and will need to check out with the counter agent and I don't want last minute reprice drama either at pick up or drop off.

We have email and printed copies of the reservation showing the 'estimated total' - there appears to be no way to get the website to price the reservation correctly, unless it's pricing it correctly, but showing the rate details incorrectly - but I doubt $169 for 5 days of SUV rental at SEA over a holiday weekend is really the correct price, with or without a code.

During the booking process, the site shows the location, but a series of "?????" in place of the pickup and drop off dates/time - yet after confirmation, that information shows correctly - except for the daily rate.

Anyone else seeing this right now?

Looks like the website is completely offline now - will be interesting to see if the reservation is re-priced when I log back on.

Did anyone else make a reservation when the site was malfunctioning?

Did you have the option to do pay-now? that would have been a great choice because everything would have been prepaid and you would have a legitimate beef with your credit card if they tried to bill you for more instead of just an "estimated total"

Probably too late now, however, did you consider looking at sites like Kayak or Expedia/Travelocity/Orbitz, at least to see what the rate "should" be.

Booking through them (not Kayak, but the latter 3), you may even have an additional level of protection over the price (should they price out the same.

I made a backup reservation with National...in case at check-out the agent decides to reprice the reservation, they can just walk away and get the other car.

The concern I have is a reprice when the car is returned or the contract is audited later on - if they have a printed reservation with total 'x', can the location or Avis arbitrarily change the price after the fact due to a website error? I should think their window for a reprice exists only when the car is checked out, not at return or weeks later.

I went back to avis.com to try and rebook the reservation, but the site is still down....amazed at the level of incompetence within their IT department.

Avis.com Mobile Is Up & Working
 

Looking @ Avis' Mobile Site, I get The Following BASE Rates for July 2-7 at SEA:

Chevrolet Aveo or similar - 528.99 USD
Chevrolet Cobalt or similar - 533.99 USD
Chevrolet Cruze or similar - 551.99 USD
Ford Fusion or similar - 563.99 USD
Chevrolet Impala or similar - 563.99 USD
Buick Lucerne or similar - 540.99 USD
Cadillac CTS or similar - 654.99 USD
Chevrolet Traverse or similar - 608.99 USD
Ford Escape or similar - 549.99 USD
GMC Yukon or similar - 774.99 USD
Chevrolet Equinox or similar - 558.99 USD
Chevrolet Suburban or similar - 905.99 USD

Oh, and expect around 33% in taxes on top of those base rates.