FlyerTalk Forums - Has the return grace period vanished?

Quote:

Originally Posted by RichardInSF (Post 12239307)

Booking a longer rental and returning early makes no sense at all to me as a "strategy" to get around this charge -- it allows them to reprice the daily charge which could go up dramatically. They were perfectly willing to keep my daily rate if I was more than one hour late.

The question is, given that the timestamp out is not exact and often reflects when I get the rental agreement rather than when I leave the lot, why shouldn't they be required to have a reasonable grace period?

there is no strategy to avoid hourly fees except returning your car on time. people are under the mistaken impression that car rental contracts are some sort of negotiated entity that allows for some sort of grace period or else the rental company can charge you whatever you want.

here is the truth for those who may not quite know how this works.

when they quote you a price, its always an estimate. Its an estimate based on what information you gave them (pick up/drop off, airport). the estimate is based on a particular rate code. The rate code is derived by the computer to search for the best possible rate based on the information that you gave them. Some rates are good for only 99 hours and if you estimate your total time you own the car is going to be less than 99 hours, then the computer thinks THAT rate is the best for you. But if you were to estimate 100 hours, that puts you in the weekly rate category, and it searches weekly rates for the best possible based on what information you gave them (including discount codes and such)

They give you a daily rate, a weekly rate, and an hourly rate in most circumstances, and it will look something similar to this:

hourly 14.33
daily 35.99
Weekly 169.99
(occasionally, they will have date and time restrictions here as well, based on the rate code you were selected for, once again based on the information you gave)

(forgive me, the prices are not to scale, just made up for demonstration).

now, day of pickup, you pick up the car at 113pm. assuming no time and date restrictions and using the above scale, you can EXACTLY predict your total rental cost regardless of how long you keep the car, one hour or 29 days, based on the above information, when you consider the 29 minute grace.

now, quickly, grace period is the 29 minute period after each billable segment that is not billed. so if you go over two days by 31 minutes, you can technically keep the car for another 59 minutes (or 29 minutes after the full billed hour you already incurred) and your charges will be the same regardless of when you return the car as long as its within the first 29 minutes of the second hour. (confusing i know, so i will mathematically demonstrate)

Keep the car until two days later at 113, you will pay 35.99*2 plus fees and taxes. (car within the grace period of first hour)

Keep the car until two days later at 144, you pay 35.99*2 plus 1 hour at 14.33 plus taxes and fees. (billed 1 hour, car returned 2 min past grace)

keep the car until two days later at 215, you pay 35.99*2 plus 1 hour at 14.33 plus taxes and fees. (billed 1 hour, car returned after billed hour but during the second 29 min grace period)

keep the car until two days later at 242, you pay 35.99*2 plus 1 hour at 14.33 plus taxes and fees. (billed 1 hour, car returned after billed hour but during the second 29 min grace period)

keep the car until two days later at 245, you pay 35.99*2 plus 2 hours at 14.33 plus taxes and fees. (billed 2 hours, car returned after billed hour and beyond the second hour's grace period)

the above scale is somewhat smart. if the hourly rate exceeds the daily rate (i.e. the 14.33*number of hours exceeds 35.99), it charges you the daily rate. if the daily rate exceeds the weekly rate, your charged the weekly rate.

now this forumula can be used perfectly to figure out your bill. But one thing you need to take into account is that when you cross the day threshold and are billed for, like in our example, 2 days and 1 hour, many locations by law are required to charge you full day's fees and taxes. so that hour might actually cost more than 35.99 when you take into account road tax per day, concession fees per day, airport lot fee or whatever else fees that are triggered by daily rental cost not by percentage of bill. Those fees are sickly pissy to get, but are not under any control of the rental agency as those are due to the local authority, wherever that may be. the only way to avoid those is to return the car less than the grace period or before you estimated your pickup time.

so all rental companies use this same formula to determine the cost of your rental. I could go more into the "rate code" description of how things work, but for this purpose current will suffice.

So changing the pickup time and drop off time will not be an effective strategy for stopping hourly fees. Regardless of when or where you pick up the car, the fee schedule is set, and in writing in front of you, to adjust on your own.

Given my inside knowledge, I always modify rental times by 5-10-15-20 1hr 2hrs sometimes more when I am searching for the best rate. It doesnt take long to do so and many flyertalkers do that anyway with discount codes so its nothing new.

My reason for checking the different times is to see if the rental computer (reservation wizard as its called in avis parlance) will give me a better rate or a different rate code with better terms. So if i tell the rental system im renting a car for 99 hours and my rate code says 99 hours max, i put in a reservation for 100 hours to see the next rate code up and the price difference. if the price jumps too much (i.e. for me more than 5 bucks) i would take my sweet time getting my bags. stop and hit the head, maybe buy a soda, adjust my mirrors on the car, check to make sure the gas is full AND make sure THE AGENT PUTS THE CORRECT PICKUP TIME not just on my contract but into the system.

But thats just me.