Budget Rental Question -- Later Pickup Than Reserved Time? (rent, reservation, airports)
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I rent from Budget 4-5 times/year, but this issue has never come up. I'm scheduled to pick up a car at the airport at 12pm, but I want to push that to 6pm. The Budget chat agent told me there is a 15-hour grace period for pickup, meaning that I can pick up at 6pm without a rate change. When I asked her where on Budget's website I can see that terms/conditions verbiage, she told me to search Google for it.
I'm not finding anything on the Budget website to confirm this. Anyone have any experience with this?
I don't have your answer but I'd say you stand a greater chance of them not having a car available at 6pm versus noon. Unless you prepaid, if your car is the last one on the lot and it's 5pm and there is someone at the counter needing a car, are they going to turn them away?
I don't have your answer but I'd say you stand a greater chance of them not having a car available at 6pm versus noon. Unless you prepaid, if your car is the last one on the lot and it's 5pm and there is someone at the counter needing a car, are they going to turn them away?
You are absolutely correct. Thanks for the clarity!
I'm pretty certain there is zero issue in terms of your reservation being honored....but as oceangaia says that's only IF they still have a car for you. fwiw, I rented from budget this past week, and I showed up 4 hours after my reservation time, no problem.
Phone agent confirmed that it is airport location only, which is where I'm at, so I think I'm going to test the theory tomorrow and see what happens. Fingers crossed!
Does anyone know why this is? They used to have enough cars to meet the demand, in general. What happened? Did some of the cars catch COVID and die?
They sold a lot of cars to reduce inventory. And haven't been in a hurry to replace them plus the manufacturers are backed up. With no revenues last spring/summer, they sold cars to pay the bills.
Rental car prices are sky-high as more people are getting out to travel, but less vehicles to rent.
“When the pandemic first hit the rental car companies saw demand drop by 90%,” said Jonathan Weinberg, founder of AutoSlash.com. “They essentially shifted into survival mode. They had to sell off hundreds of thousands of vehicles in order to survive.”
“Presidents Day and Valentine’s weekend, 18 of the 20 airports in Florida were completely sold out,” Weinberg said. “It is probably going to be September before we see some real relief.” https://www.kxan.com/news/rental-car...aveling-again/
Does anyone know why this is? They used to have enough cars to meet the demand, in general. What happened? Did some of the cars catch COVID and die?
Umm, the rental car shortage has been pretty thoroughly covered in the news.
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